


What things we have heard together

by jouissant



Series: What things we have heard together [2]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alcohol, Established Relationship, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Post-War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 00:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6064573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick was smiling; he had been smiling for weeks. His cheeks were sore with it and he thought he must look ridiculous, but it was Austria and there was a lake and an embarrassment of sunlight and nobody seemed to think it strange that he went around grinning like an idiot more often than was entirely characteristic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What things we have heard together

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a sequel to [You want some bourbon/I want some oranges](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5486525). In my head it follows directly from the end of that fic, but I also tried to make sure it more or less stands alone. I'm planning at least one more fic to complete the series, which will probably follow on from this one, because I'm obsessed with these two and cannot help myself. 
> 
> Thanks to [semper-ama](http://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama) for beta work and general handholding. 
> 
> Title from "Statue" by Frank O'Hara.

In the bedroom in Austria Dick hovered between Nix’s legs, his body a pale arc, his hair still wet from swimming. He’d run up the stairs in his trunks, towel-clad and heedless, and had taken only the most cursory look around him before hammering on Nix’s door, softly at first and then loud enough to rouse.

Nix glared at him when he finally opened up. “Where’s the damned fire?” he asked, stalking back across the room and flopping back down on the bed with barely a backward glance at Dick.

Dick had laughed and followed him, and was gratified to discover that there were apparently some things more precious to Nix than sleep. He was slicked with spit and perspiration, one hand on himself and the other on Nix, fingertips running down through the hair on his thighs. Nix looked like he didn’t know quite what to make of Dick’s roving hands, his greedy eyes. It was surprising, all the things Dick wanted to do, all the things his body now seemed to know it could do. Sometimes he barely recognized himself in the searching, wanting creature he became when they were together.

He was very hard. He pressed the head of his cock to Nix’s body and thought about how it might yield. Nix shifted in response and spread his legs wider on the bed and the way he moved when Dick slid against him painted a slightly clearer picture.

“You know what they say about the British navy, don’t you? Nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.” Nix’s voice had a hitch to it, but then so did Dick’s.

“You’re a trove of facts, Lew. What do they say about the paratroops?”

“I dunno. That two out of three’s not bad? Though to be honest, I’ve never been one for rum.” Nix bit his lip.

“Mmm. How about the other?”

Nix reddened. He scrubbed at his face with a hand, looked fretfully down the length of his body like he’d finally fully realized the way Dick was touching him, what it meant. “You want to?”

Dick wanted to, he must want to. At the moment he couldn’t think of a thing he didn’t want to do, so he nodded, thrumming with nerves. He was smiling; he had been smiling for weeks. His cheeks were sore with it and he thought he must look ridiculous, but it was Austria and there was a lake and an embarrassment of sunlight and nobody seemed to think it strange that he went around grinning like an idiot more often than was entirely characteristic.

Nix shook his head as if in disbelief, and smiled winningly back. _He_ didn’t look ridiculous at all; when he smiled he only made Dick want to kiss him. He could smile forever as far as Dick was concerned. He bent his legs and caught Dick between his knees, put his hands on Dick’s waist. Nix’s thumbs skated over the plane of his stomach and downward. Dick rocked forward beseechingly into the empty air.

“Really?” Nix asked. He propped himself up on his elbows, and Dick watched his mouth.

“Yeah, really. But wait, have—have you? Before?” The thought of it—Dick didn’t know whether or not to be affronted. He was, he decided. Nix with someone else. It made Dick grit his teeth.

Nix swallowed, and finally seemed the littlest bit abashed. “No,” he said. “But I think I can work out how it goes.”

Dick was instantly seized by several questions, the first of which was _Now?_ which sent Nix into a paroxysm of laughter. Dick rolled his eyes and dove on top of him, and found Nix shut up quite handily when pinned to the mattress and thoroughly kissed. Maybe some other time, then; some time when they weren’t moving together quite this way, when Nix wasn’t sliding a hand between them, when he could last. He groaned. He kissed Nix’s collarbone.

There was a knock on the door.

“Shit,” hissed Nix. “Shit, shit.”

He shoved Dick off of him with no small measure of violence. Dick’s mouth was open, words crowding his throat; he’d nearly forgotten he was in Nix’s room and not his own, and called out for whoever it was to wait. Nix jabbed a helpful elbow into his ribs and Dick came to his senses, scrambled off the bed and cantered bare-assed into the bathroom.

Outside he heard the scuffling sounds of Nix dressing. “Hold on a minute!” Nix said. A thud, a curse. Dick shifted from foot to foot on the tile and waited.

He heard the door squeak open. There was a muffled conversation that seemed to carry on far too long, then the snap of the door closing again, and then Nix came into the bathroom.

“Well?”

“Runner from battalion. Nothing important, so naturally they had to come in person.” He scrubbed at his face. “Jesus, how do I look?”

He looked, at best, like he’d slept in his clothes. Dick thought that at least he suited disrepair. “Fine,” he said. “Better than me, at any rate.”

“Oh, now,” Nix said, already managing to look wolfish. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Dick crossed his arms over his chest. Their earlier activities had chased the morning chill away; he was cold again, but it wasn’t the lake that set him shivering now. “We should stop,” he said quietly. “That was too close.” And at least part of him meant it, but already he had stepped in, twined his fingers in Nix’s hair. His cock stirred against Nix’s hip, and how was it that he could be so lost again so quickly?

“You’re right,” Nix said. He slipped his leg between Dick’s thighs. “Cut it out, why don’t you.”

***

They didn’t stop, not altogether. But the incident seemed to quell a bit of the adolescent fervor in them, and Dick guessed that was for the best. He swam most mornings now, rose and went straight from the luxury suite he called his billet, a literal cold shower to chase away thoughts of other places he might to steal away.

At night they crowded into drawing-rooms full of antiques and porcelain and watched men struggle through the sand on Okinawa. A stand of date palms shivered in a hail of artillery; it was strange to watch, as if trees should only bow to men’s guns in the snow.

“It’s like looking into a magic mirror,” Nix said later. “You think on some beach somewhere they watched us on the newsreels? The Battered Bastards of Bastogne?” His voice pitched up like a newsman’s.

“I hope not,” Dick said. They were sitting on a sofa up on what had been the hotel’s mezzanine. From the lobby they could hear the echoes of men at cards; now and then Dick would think he caught ghosts of old voices, drifting up on the air. He ought to write Buck again, he thought.

“So,” said Nix. “When are you going?”

Dick looked up at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, c’mon. Don’t be coy. You and Ron have already got it all planned out.”

“Speirs is enthusiastic,” Dick said, holding up his hand to wave Nix off. Nix on a tear was something; he could seize on an idea like a dog on a bone and woe betide the man who tried to get away. Dick could sense it coming; it had been coming for days, and now here it was.

“So’re you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I’m not _enthusiastic_ about going back into combat. I just—”

“You just want to go to back into combat as soon as possible.”

“I’m bad at doing nothing,” Dick said. “That’s all. And if we’re going anyway…well, it’s the same reason I joined up in the first place, isn’t it.” 

He picked at a tear in the upholstery demonstratively. The couch was covered in dusty gold velveteen. He worked his index finger in against the stuffing and tugged, producing a thick and satisfying rip.

“Easy there. They’re going to want their settee back one of these days.”

Dick huffed and withdrew. They were sitting at opposite ends of the couch, and they were sitting out in the open. On purpose, Dick noted, part of an odd calculus they’d both taken up independently. How many times had they drifted in together at night back in training, Nix soused from a night on the town, Dick his erstwhile companion? They’d shared hotel rooms back then and billets later, laid out together in fields without a thought. Now they watched their friends’ faces and wondered who might be keeping count. Duplicity probably bothered Dick more than it did Nix—Nix, who was used to having secrets. He put his foot up on the couch and tried to nudge Dick’s thigh with the toe of his boot, succeeding only in smearing mud over the cushion.

“Aw, would you look at that,” he said. “That’s a real mess. Let’s move. What do you say?”

“Now who’s ruining the furniture. I say it’s late, and I ought to be going.”

Nix shot him a look that said _you’re no fun,_ and Dick let his eyes close, just for a moment, just long enough to not-see him stretching his arm out along the back of the couch. He ran his fingernails lightly over the nap of the velveteen, a scrape like fieldmice nesting someplace soft, someplace they shouldn’t. You ought to roust them. You’d rather not. You’ll send the cat into the barn and see what she makes of things.

Nix moved his hand, put it back in his lap. Dick tried not to watch it go. There was a noise from the bottom of the stairs, and Nix sat up straighter. “Anyway, I know you’re horribly jealous of my Continental upbringing, Dick,” he said. “It’s only natural you’d try to catch up. But if you think you’re jetting off to the sunny South Pacific all by yourself, you’ve got another think coming.”

Dick squinted across at him. “Oh yeah?”

“I can hardly let you get one up on me, now can I?” He was looking at Dick sideways, that little smirk of his riding on his lips.

“How many points have you got?” Dick asked.

Nix’s smile snagged. “What does it matter?”

“Just tell me.”

Nix didn’t. Instead he got up off of the couch, turned to lean over the bannister and stare out over the vast space above the lobby. A chandelier hung at its center, crystal soaking its brass boughs in a perpetual drip. There was something obscene about it, Dick thought, hanging there genteel and glowing while the rest of Europe lay shattered.

“I think my parents stayed here once,” Nix said.

“Come on.”

“No, I’m serious. I’ll ask ‘em about it. I’m sure they’ve got a snap in some album somewhere. Lake in the background. Like a picture postcard. It was probably murder on my mother’s hay fever.” And that was Nix all over, that blithe yet willful misinterpretation. It made Dick twitch.

“You should go home, Nix,” he said.

Nix laughed. The sound was dry and distinctly humorless. He leaned on his elbows and let his hands splay into the air, like he was reaching for the light, like he could jump for it. Dick thought he’d better go to bed before he had to watch him try.

***

He woke up later in the night to someone in his room. He’d been dreaming, something vivid and panoramic and violent. His body seemed aware of the intruder before he was, and he was rolling towards the edge of the bed before he quite knew what he was doing. He struggled, his leg tangled in the sheet, the old stiff ankle from Carentan that was nothing to write home about most of the time. He lurched forward, and then Nix caught him around the arm and pulled him back down onto the bed.

“What are you doing?” Dick gasped.

Nix was breathing very fast. His body had the heavy laxity it took on when he’d been drinking. Dick would know the slump of his shoulders anywhere; if he’d seen him come in he would have known the way Nix let the doorframe take his weight as he slid in from the hallway. Beyond Dick’s door the lights still burned the way they did every night in Austria, all that glorious electricity. The better for carousing by, and none of the men had let that opportunity pass, least of all Nix. He had a cigarette between his fingers and his breath was sweet with wine.

“I’ve got the points,” Nix said desperately.

“Okay,” Dick said, still fuzzy with sleep.

“Do you want me to go back?”

“I—”

“No, don’t. Don’t think about it. Just answer.” 

His fingers dug into Dick’s bicep, and Dick tried and failed to twist free. Nix’s cigarette was wobbling, the end a beacon.

“Lew, it’s not up to me.”

“Say it was,” Nix said. “Say you could have it any way you wanted. Go jump on Tokyo by yourself, or—”

“I wouldn’t ask you to take the risk,” Dick said.

“To hell with the risk,” Nix said. “What do you _want_? I’ve got the points to go home. Do you want me to go?”

Dick shook his head. His mouth was awash in spit; he choked it back. “I want you with me,” he said.

The words hung in the air. Nix put his cigarette up to his mouth and took a long, illuminating suck on the end, as if he thought he could keep hold of himself that way. But before long his lips were twitching around it, grinning through an exhaled cloud of smoke. So that had been a declaration, and one Dick had been neatly tricked into. Funny how he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“So,” Nix said. “You got a plan?”

Dick leaned over and turned the lamp on. No sense in sitting around in the dark. “Not really. I’ve been thinking of asking for a transfer,” he said. “However’s fastest. I think they’ll give it to me. But look, Lew, if you want to go back—”

Even as he said the words he could feel greed clutch at his heart. He’d had so much of Nix already, far more than he was entitled to.

“Like I said, I’ve been to the States. And Austria’s awfully hospitable, but let’s be honest, if you’ve seen one Alp, you’ve seen them all.”

“Ready for greener pastures?”

“Whole new hemisphere. Different set of constellations and everything. I’ll take you stargazing.”

***

Dick allowed himself perhaps a night of gratification at Nix’s readiness to follow him before he lapsed into feeling bad about it. It didn’t sit right, he thought, not when everyone else around them was scheming to get home, cursing their ill luck even as they rallied around Shifty Powers the day he won the lottery. But Nix was a grownup, and there was nothing Dick could do but take him at face value, especially when he was inclined towards doing so anyway. For he’d meant what he said that night, Nix clasping his arm on the bed: He wanted Nix with him, selfish as the sentiment was.

When they told Harry their plan there was a part of Dick that was certain he knew, could read it in both their faces like a headline. But then the moment passed and Nix elbowed Harry and told Dick he’d decided to go back to Wilkes-Barre and sow enough oats for both of them, “just in case you get your balls blown off and can’t make any little Pennsylvanians of your own.” Which made Dick blush, and made Harry laugh, and made Nix take a long and self-satisfied drag on his cigarette. As one they leaned back and blinked into the sunshine.

“He’s terrible,” Dick said to Harry. “Can’t you exert a little control?”

Harry opened one eye. “Please. Lewis Nixon reins himself in for one man, and I ain’t him.”

Dick risked a look at Nix then, though he was sure his expression was perilously soft. “Heck if I’ve ever seen him do it,” he said.

Nix shoved his sunglasses up further on his nose and shook his head.

“On second thought, Harry, get the hell out of here already. You’re only encouraging him, and he’s enough of a handful as it is. Can’t sit still for a second, for one thing. He’s too damn antsy, and he’s inflicting it on everyone. If we don’t ship out of here ASAP he’s going to have a mass desertion on his hands with this 0600 close-order drill regimen he’s got them on.”

“Yeah, about that. Be straight with me a minute,” Harry said, looking Dick in the face. “You really don’t think they need you any more?”

The question brought Dick up short. His pause must have seemed dire enough, because Nix quit his razzing and took his glasses off. Dick could feel him looking, feel both of them, but it was somehow worse from Nix.

“They’re good soldiers,” he said simply.

He held his hands out, palms up as if he had some further wisdom to unburden himself of, but the words wouldn’t come. And in the end, Dick found he had nothing of the sort to say. They were good soldiers, and they might want him around but they certainly didn’t need him. He thought of Speirs, of Lipton, and the way they’d come on. Under them he’d send Easy back to any line anywhere, safe in the knowledge they’d probably take better care of them then he himself could. They were more among the men now, they could see the little things he couldn’t any more, the chinks, the way the company hung together. Already there were more replacements than not, men he’d never led in the field, and if Dick was honest, Easy’s strength had always been its non coms right from the start. So what did a major matter, at the end of the day?

 _They’ll love you_ , Nix had said of the early drills. They didn’t need to love him, Dick thought, and what did it matter so long as they stayed alive. They’d curse him six ways to Sunday, sure, but he’d learned not to care long ago, or that was what he told himself anyway. Harry was picking at a tuft of moss that clung to the brick, but out of the corner of his eye Dick could still feel Nix watching.

That night Dick sat at his desk, coffee cup at his elbow. The ETO may have been winding to a close but it still vomited forth an unceasing stream of paperwork, perhaps moreso than ever before. Dick sometimes found himself glad of it, because at least it gave him something to do. There came a single rap at the door, and Nix entered before Dick could tell him to come in. He felt a peculiar sense of deja-vu, a rippling continuity that made him forget where he was, what he was doing here. All of a sudden they could be in any billet, anywhere on this battered continent.

“Hey,” Dick said.

“Hey.” Nix came in, walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. “Burning the midnight oil, are you?”

“Catching up on my backlog.” Dick shifted a a handful of papers from one pile to another.

“You know, moving them around only looks like work,” Nix said. “Come and sit by me.”

“Lew—”

“C’mon. Take a break. Besides, I know you. Once it gets late enough you only ever stare at it anyway.”

Dick sighed at the stack of requisition forms. There’d been an equally sizable stack of discharge paperwork too, for the men who had enough points to go back home and were taking the Army up on its offer to release them from duty. He’d filled those out first, so when he quit his desk and went over to sit beside Nix on the bed he could do so with a mostly clear conscience.

Dick didn’t bother keeping space between them, even though they’d agreed to try. To do so seemed almost ridiculous; he couldn’t keep count of how often they’d been folded up together in some tight spot or other, sweated or spit on each other in sleep or in training. Once they’d shared a tent on bivouac out in the woods at Fort Benning in the freezing rain, and Dick had woken in the night to Nix curled around him from behind, one warm hand on Dick’s hip. He’d lain there for awhile, half dozing, finally concluding he ought to move. He’d scooted as far as he could stand in the cold—oh, how temperate Georgia had seemed in the Ardennes—and Nix had muttered something unintelligible and rolled over. Dick had gone to sleep again, and in the morning he’d awoken to find them in the same configuration. Nix had sat up quickly, laughed and mumbled something about how he’d been dreaming. Of what or whom, he didn’t say, but regardless Dick hadn’t thought a thing about it, not really. Nothing was different now, and yet everything was.

“What’ve you been up to tonight?” Dick asked.

Nix shrugged. “Oh, the usual. Won a pretty nice tea service off of Ron in poker. Sterling, too.” Nix whistled. “He sure was pissed. Says he doesn’t get how I can put it away like I do and still focus on my hand. Little does he know.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Clearly he’s vastly underestimated your ability to hold your liquor.”

“Exactly. I’ve been practicing for years, see. It’s all come down to this moment.”

“Speirs’s silver tea set, huh. Can I expect you to hop on the wagon after tonight, then, now that you’ve claimed your prize?”

Nix laughed at that, a shade uneasily for Dick’s liking. “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” he said, and Dick smiled ruefully down at his hands.

“Of course not,” he said. A heavy silence settled after that, and Dick felt badly about it. So he took up Nix’s hand and turned it over in his, tracing the creases on his palm. Nix shivered and leaned against him, and Dick could feel his blood stirring already. So strange, he thought, that such a little thing should move him so.

“I thought,” Nix started, and Dick knew what he was going to say. But there’d never been a question of going back to the way things had been; they’d decided only that they ought to defer matters for awhile. Dick groaned. Once he’d had vast reserves of self-control, but it was like traveling, wasn’t it: once you unpacked you couldn’t fit anything back the way it had been.

“I know,” Dick said. “I know.”

He turned towards Nix and let their foreheads fall together. They were so close; the space between their mouths scant and tropical, a limited pool of air from which they traded mouthful after mouthful until kissing was simply a difference in degrees.

Nix drew back after a minute. His arms had come around Dick, and he dropped them and wiped them on his thighs. “God,” he said, tugging at his collar. “I oughta go, or—”

“No, stay,” Dick said. “I’ll—we can—”

He sat up himself and took his own arms back, clutched himself around the knees to forestall the unhelpful way his hands tried to wander. 

“There,” he said. “We’re hardly even fraternizing.”

“Just a little bit,” Nix said. He reached down to make a show of adjusting himself. “That right there’s, uh, got to count for something. But hell, who could blame me.”

Plenty of people, Dick thought. He glanced reflexively at the door.

“I locked it,” Nix said.

“Good.” Dick sighed. He unlaced his boots and slid them off and lay down along the length of the bed, patting the space beside him.

Nix looked askance at him. “You sure about this?” he asked. “It’s asking for trouble. Shit, all right.” He stretched out next to Dick and crossed his arms behind his head.

Dick wanted to turn the lamp off, wanted to drift off beside Nix and not worry about it, leave it up to him to drag himself back to his own room in the hours before dawn. But that was hardly fair, and so they settled in to do what they did most nights, which was lie together until remaining awake became unbearable. When it did, Nix would go, and Dick would be too tired to care much.

“Do you think you’ll look up Kathy? When you get back, I mean.”

He wasn’t sure why he asked the question, only that somehow lying there in the low light he’d gotten to thinking about the future, let his thoughts unfurl the way he rarely had before Austria. It was dangerous, he knew, particularly as he’d now seen to it that _when you get back_ would in short order become _if_.

Beside him, Nix tensed. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Dick said.

“That letter wasn’t exactly opening up a discussion, Dick,” Nix said, lifting himself up on one elbow. “She was pretty clear about her plans.”

“Still,” Dick said. “You don’t think she’d at least meet you to talk it over face to face? She’s your wife.”

“She _was_ my wife. Anyway, why would I want to? Why would _you_ want me to?”

“Why wouldn’t I want you to?” Dick said. “I want you to—look, I don’t know. Forget I said anything. I was just—”

“Let’s leave it,” Nix said, biting off the last word more crisply than the drink and the late hour should allow.

Dick frowned, feeling out of step. “Sure,” he said.

On impulse he pulled at Nix’s elbow until he slid his arm out from under his head. He found Nix’s hand, and laced their fingers together. Inside him there swelled a strange blend of feeling, something fraternal and something pulpy and something like a licking flame. Dick found he couldn’t quite speak, so he squeezed Nix’s hand instead. 

Long minutes came and went, but as a well-tuned radio catches some distant, thready signal so Nix must have gotten an inkling of Dick’s thoughts because eventually, he sighed deeply and said _Aw, Dick_ and squeezed back, by which point Dick was so sleepy he barely registered the reciprocation, or the dip and recoil of the mattress as Nix slid off of the bed and left with as little fanfare as had seen him in.

***

Dick had decided to join the Airborne with the knowledge that it was likely the last personal decision he’d have leave to make until the war was over. He’d been square with the idea, for the most part. You had to be, if you wanted to get by. Sometimes Dick imagined he was no longer himself but a hollowed-out drum beating an endless march; sometimes he worried he’d turned some part of himself off permanently, the way a man ties off a snakebit leg. He hoped, if it came down to that, that the loss would be worth it. But what’s a foot in trade for a heart, what’s a heart if it only belongs to one man? There were others to worry about, so many of them.

When he yelled out orders he was often unconscious of having spoken, as if the words issued from the very air around him. Once in Normandy he’d had the thought that the men ought to move along a hedge a certain way, try to outflank a kraut machine gun unit—and in the space of a blink he saw them doing it. He couldn’t remember having asked. A different man might’ve felt like a minor god, and Dick wouldn’t have blamed him for the hubris, but as it was he himself was only disturbed. When he was alone he was tempted to speak aloud just to prove he still had the capacity. Nix helped that way; when they were together Dick felt better, more of-a-piece. He always had.

When he put in for the transfer he did so knowing that free will wasn’t quite involved beyond the illusory. But perhaps his ego had gotten the better of him after all, because by the time Nix pledged to hang with him and he’d got his meeting set with the general he’d begun to think success a foregone conclusion, that in this at least the Army’s wishes would converge with his. But it wasn’t to be, and afterwards, as he left headquarters and went back to tell Nix the transfer was off he shook his head and thought he should have known.

“Oh,” was all Nix said when he heard, managing to sound perfectly neutral. Dick could see him study his face, trying to guess at what the right response would be. Dick felt more reticent than usual and went over to the desk to shuffle through his inbox, let Nix stare between his shoulder blades and think about it.

“Well, I hope we’re here all winter,” Nix said finally. “Just think of the skiing.” 

Dick sighed, feeling fettered. “We won’t make it til winter,” he said. “The men’ll kill each other. They’re certainly trying hard enough to do it already.”

“Just give ‘em some more pointless drills to do,” Nix said. “That’ll take care of everything.”

Dick turned back to him, the better to roll his eyes where Nix could see. “Really helpful, thank you,” he said.

“Look, I won’t pretend to understand why you were so stuck on this transfer in the first place—”

“I wasn’t stuck on it.”

“—But maybe you ought to think of it as something that wasn’t meant to be.”

“You think anything’s meant to be in this war, Nix? I don’t. I think it’s like wading into a damned river and doing a dead man’s float to wherever the current takes you. I just thought I might pick my next riverbank. That’s all.”

Nix reeled back theatrically, eyes wide. “Wow,” he said. “That’s awfully nihilistic of you. Those men still dying as heroes out there?”

Dick thought of Janovec, of Grant and that idiotic C Company private. Imagine shooting a man over gasoline. Imagine being so stupid with drink you couldn’t keep track of the rounds in your sidearm. Dick had killed the enemy with more care. He’d seen the man after Speirs had finished with him. He’d felt nothing, and perhaps he ought to be ashamed of it but when he tried all he could think of was Grant’s brain glistening under a German scalpel. They said he’d live, but they said lots of men would live. Either way Dick generally didn’t see them again.

“Stop,” he said to Nix. “Let’s stop. We’re on the same side.”

“Of course we are,” Nix said, looking offended. “I just—maybe I’m just a little bit happy to put some more space between you and those kamikaze sons of bitches over there. Can’t imagine why that might be.”

“You were going to come along,” Dick said lamely.

Nix only shrugged. The gesture chafed at Dick, but he couldn’t quite say why.

***

He broke the water’s surface and shut his eyes, the cold swallowing him up, streaking along his body. He swam out as far as he could before his lungs began to burn, and when they did he kicked his way up, wiping the water out of his eyes, spitting and taking in a big gulp of air. He set out along the shoreline where the trees drooped lazily down to meet the lake, thinking of nothing but the pleasant drag of the water against his limbs. Presently he came to the landmark he used as a turnaround point, a decrepit landing jutting from a muddy beach. There was a battered rowboat tied up to it, the hull a peeling blue. Someone had painted _Liesl_ on the wood in white script, and so Dick had begun to spend his return trips thinking of just who Liesl had been, of whom she’d gone out with on the lake, and when.

 _Maybe Liesl’s the guy’s dog,_ said Nix in his head. Which was another thing that tended to happen on Dick’s swims, that imaginary running commentary. As a consequence he usually found himself arriving back at the dock with a smile on his face and the proverbial song in his heart.

Today he found Nix in the flesh, sitting on the end of the dock with his bare feet dangling into the water. He was shirtless, wearing swim trunks, which was almost more arresting than the day he’d dived in fully clothed. Dick swam up and took hold of the dock with one hand, grabbed Nix’s ankle with the other.

“Hi,” he said.

“Morning,” Nix said. “How’s the water?”

“Water’s fine,” Dick said, squinting up at Nix silhouetted against the brightening sky. “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t sound so suspicious,” Nix said. “Can’t a fellow take an interest in aquatics?”

“Sure he can, unless he regularly calls me certifiable for going swimming before breakfast.”

“Oh, shut up,” Nix said, and shoved off into the water. He dropped like a stone and disappeared, leaving nothing but a spumy trail of bubbles in his wake. Dick had only just begun to feel a prick of worry when a pair of arms closed around his waist and yanked him under. Beneath the surface the world was blue and green and weedy. Their bodies glowed like marble as they came together, their legs churning. They kissed until they couldn’t, and then they burst up into the light.

“I came down to tell you something, you know,” Nix said, gasping. They swayed to and fro in the water, drifting half under the dock. The light rippled over them, oscillating and serpentine. They clung to the pilings and let the water slap gently at their bodies.

“Oh yeah?”

Nix grinned. “Yeah.”

Dick hooked a leg around both of Nix’s. “So tell me,” he said.

“I, uh. I know you were real hot on Tokyo,” Nix said. “But I don’t think it’s going to pan out after all.”

“What?”

“Japan’s surrendering. First offer was a little picky; we sent it back for a rewrite. But it’s…it’s over, Dick. The war’s over, or as good as.”

Dick laughed. He felt as if something had come loose inside him. Nix’s hair was plastered to his forehead; Dick swam closer and brushed it back with his fingers, and when Nix dragged him under the dock and kissed him again he didn’t protest at all.

They walked back towards the repurposed hotel shoulder to shoulder on the path, towels draped over their backs. When they got to the edge of the trees Dick knew they’d have to pay attention, put at least couple of feet between them. But now they were bold; they let their arms and the backs of their hands brush from step to step. The light was golden. When Dick looked back on that day he’d remember Austria gilded from peak to valley, the two of them right there in the center, dazzled as if they were walking on the sun.

***

They didn’t stay for the skiing. They pulled out soon enough and went back to France, where they populated a tent city that rumor had it wasn’t much better than a replacement depot.

“We take Hitler’s goddamn Eagle’s Nest and this is our victory lap? I should’ve stayed behind with the frauleins in Berchtesgaden.”

“You wish, Perco.”

“Hell yeah I wish. This place barely got running water, and would you get a load of the chow?”

“Rather not get a load, thanks.”

So the men complained, but Dick didn’t think he was imagining that there was a lightness to it that hadn’t been there before, even as the summer turned to fall and the rain and chill set in, turning the turfy makeshift roads to black mud that clotted boot soles and tires alike.

“You know, I’m really going to miss this place,” Nix said, surveying the camp from Dick’s office, blissfully located within four more or less solid walls. He was still sleeping in a tent, but he’d take his comforts when he could.

“It’s going to miss you, Nix,” Dick said. “Not sure what we’ll all do without your particular brand of intelligence.”

“Hey, I’ve got a knack. Deny it at your peril.”

Dick laughed, though as he did he could feel a warning sort of sharpness, as one brushes up against a knife edge and draws back just shy of cutting. Nix had a furlough in London followed by a ticket back across the Atlantic, and he was shipping off the following morning. And Dick...Dick was staying.

“So I guess they do need you after all,” Nix said, coming around to sit on the edge of Dick’s desk.

“There’s a lot to be done,” Dick said, which wasn’t much of an answer.

“Maybe you need them. Ever thought of that?”

Dick leaned over and dug his pointer finger into Nix’s ribs. “What I need is for you to stop harassing me,” he said. “Haven’t you got to go pack?”

Nix squirmed away from Dick’s hand and snorted. “Yeah, that’ll take all night. Say, you coming out with me? You’ve got to. Last night together in Europe, Dick.”

“If I say yes, will you get out of my hair?”

“Never,” Nix said, but he slid off of the desk anyway, turned and rapped his knuckles on the wood. “Come find me when you’re finished,” he said, and then he crossed the room, swung around the doorframe and was gone.

When Dick found Nix later he brought a jeep with him, pulling it up in front of his tent and honking once, sharply, startling a couple of passing privates into a salute. Presently Nix came ambling out into the evening. From the look of him, he’d gotten an early start. “Major Winters,” he said, climbing inside. “Riding in style. I like it.”

“It’s a mess out,” Dick said by way of explanation. “Wouldn’t want you to start off your furlough by catching a chill.”

“You’re very considerate,” Nix said, leaning heavily against him, canting his mouth a shade too close to Dick’s ear, making him think of things he’d really rather not in the waning daylight, in the open.

“Easy there, Lew,” he said quietly.

“God,” Nix said. “When’ll I ever get you alone?”

“You’ve got me.”

“Not what I mean, and you know it.” Nix made a show of scooting over, straightening up so they were no longer shoulder to shoulder, and he sat like that all the way into town as if trying to prove a point.

They found what was left of a little inn, one that had come through the German occupation seemingly on the strength of the owner’s sheer bitterness and his ability to squirrel away his best vintages. Now, he was grateful enough (or shrewd enough) to open his establishment to the occupation force at what Nix assured Dick was only a slight markup. Not that it mattered to Dick; Nix ordered him _un cafe, s’il vous plait_ and left the _vin_ to himself.

“You know,” Nix said, swirling his glass of red, “I’m not sorry about my little Vat 69 shortage. I think it did me some good. Diversified my palate.”

Dick stirred his coffee. “Tell that to your parents,” Dick said. “I’m sure they’ll be very proud.”

Nix scoffed. “Jesus. You’re not kidding. Goering’s wine cellar’ll be the highlight. You watch, if there’s one war story that gets trotted out at parties it’ll be that one, forevermore.” He shook his head, running the pad of his finger around the base of his glass. “I guess it suits,” he said.

“Come on, you don’t really believe that,” Dick said. “You had a heck of a war, Nix.”

“That’s nice of you to say. Then there’s the time I sent you blundering into a couple companies of SS, but who’s counting.”

“Aw, c’mon. There’s no call to get all maudlin on your last night.”

Dick kicked him under the table. Quick as a wink, Nix caught his foot between both of his and held it there beneath his chair. Dick drew in a breath and cast around the room, but the inn was gloomy, the only other patrons on such an inclement evening an elderly couple nursing their wine and a lone GI, sitting at a corner table and scribbling a letter.

“Speaking of maudlin,” Nix said, “—which is a real five-dollar word, by the way, point to Franklin and Marshall—I had a thought.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. About—about Jersey. If you were still thinking about it.”

“What a coincidence,” Dick said. “Looks as if I’ve got an interview set up already. Some ragtag nitration company. Although I’m not sure they can afford me.”

By now the joke should’ve been unbearably old, only it wasn’t yet. Dick still flushed when he recited the variant of the moment, and Nix still beamed back at him just like he had the very first time Dick had turned to him and said _tell me more about New Jersey._

“Well, keep an open mind. See what they can scrape up,” Nix said. “But seriously, I think you ought to come out with Stanhope and me and talk it over when you get back.”

“Stanhope, huh?”

Somehow it hadn’t quite occurred to Dick that he’d be dealing with Nix’s father.“I guess you’ll prime the pump for me? Run it by him. So it’s not a complete shock.” He allowed his thoughts to stray into a fragment of fantasy in which he simply turned up on Nix’s doorstep, uniform on, duffle slung over his shoulder. Reporting for duty, sir.

“Yeah, sure. But there’s nothing to it, Dick.” Nix waved his hand. “He’ll be lucky to have you. He’ll have that figured out long before you’re stateside again. And then it’ll just be a matter of hashing out the particulars.” 

Dick smiled across the table at him. At times he had difficulty stomaching Nix’s breeziness; he who’d worked since he could remember, never knew a summer he wasn’t up with the sun, setting to some job or another. One year he picked peaches; he got hired on at an orchard, and he’d rise long before dawn to do his chores for free so he might earn the privilege of going to work for money afterwards. He remembered clambering through the branches and tossing fruit down as the farmer rode a tractor down the lane of peach trees, mowing. There’d been all the peaches he could eat, there’d been pesticides that made his eyes water.

He’d acknowledged, sitting by the lake back in Austria, that this grand plan of Nix’s might never come to fruition, and that that was all right. He’d only ever half expect it, and that way there’d be no call to go getting disappointed. It was a nice idea, and Nix meant well by it, and Dick could get a lot of mileage out of those two things, enough to think fondly of him, and that was really all that mattered.

They drove back to camp and returned the jeep, tromped through the mud back to Nix’s tent. Inside Dick settled on the edge of his cot and watched him fold the contents of his tent into his footlocker and duffle.

“Seems like I should give you some of this stuff,” Nix said, rummaging through a pile of clothing. “You need it more than me now.”

“I guess,” Dick said. “All you need’s a dress uniform for London and a couple pairs of underwear. Might get a little ripe on the boat ride, though.”

Nix winced. “God, you think that’ll be any better than it was coming over? Maybe we won’t be packed in quite so tight on the return trip.”

“I sure hope not. Hey, remember how Sobel tried to lead us in PT up on the deck? That was something, huh?”

“No kidding. And who was it who got so seasick—Christianson? Christianson staggered up and puked all over his feet. Sobel’s face—we ought to’ve put Pat in for the goddamn Medal of Honor.”

“That was the end of PT,” Dick said. “I still wonder if he did it on purpose.”

“I dunno, he was pretty miserable. I remember him crying to Doc about it.”

Nix sat heavily on the cot next to Dick. He set his hand on Dick’s thigh, just above his knee at first. But then he leaned in, ran his hand up the inseam of Dick’s trousers as he did.

“Goddammit,” Nix said. “Can’t you at least come to London? None of the higher-ups would say no to a furlough. You haven’t taken a pass since you went to Paris, and that’s coming up on a year ago.”

“That’s because nobody got a pass, Lew. Because we were at the front.” 

“Even so. C’mon. Come with me,” Nix said. “We’ll get a hotel room. I’ll put you up somewhere nice, no Red Cross billets for us.”

Dick felt his face get hot. “I—I wish I could. But I’ve got meetings all week; can’t miss ‘em.”

Nix made a frustrated noise. “Damn you and your intractable sense of duty,” he said. “Any other man would be wrangling leave any which way.”

Dick wasn’t any other man, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. He could see Nix thinking it, though, from the way the expression on his face shaded both consternated and warm. That look made him want to kiss Nix very badly, and tonight, on the eve of his departure, he wouldn’t deny himself. He reached out and slid his fingers inside the collar of Nix’s shirt, and then he pulled him forward to meet his mouth. Nix sucked in a breath.

“You’re always so shocked,” Dick said against Nix’s cheek.

“Huh?”

“When I start things up.”

Nix swallowed, his adams-apple moving against Dick’s folded fingers. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just thought you’d be—”

“What, a cold fish?”

Nix had the good grace to sputter. “No. _No._ I just never expected—oh, never mind. Just kiss me again, would you?”

Which was a stalling tactic, but not one Dick would call him on. Not now. His mouth was too inviting, and fit together with Dick’s far too well. He let Nix cup his face, and he set his free hand down on top of Nix’s thigh and leaned inexorably forward until the only place for Nix to go was back. He stretched out along the length of the cot, and Dick lay on top of him.

“This is cozy,” Nix said, for the cot was as wide as a fairly skinny man. There was no way to lie here and not be pressed flush together, not feel everything the other’s body did. Dick could feel sweat prickle along his temples, at the small of his back under the uniform. He fingered the top button on Nix’s shirt.

“We could, you know,” Nix said. “Nobody’s coming.”

He was probably right. Harry had shipped out already, and it seemed that everyone else who might want to wish Lew Nixon well was gone by now too. Around them the night was mostly quiet; every so often you could hear the blare of laughter, or hushed voices on their way back to billet. All the little sounds of the Army, rising up in the air like crickets. Dick wondered how he’d sleep when he finally got back. That one night in Paris he’d woken every hour on the hour, covered in sweat and scrabbling for the clock.

“We haven’t got a door,” Dick murmured.

Nix shrugged. “We’ve got a flap. It’s closed.”

“God,” Dick said, the word leaving his lips unbidden, widening Nix’s eyes. “We shouldn’t, but—” But Nix was leaving, but the war was over, but he wanted to. Nobody was coming. He hooked his fingers into Nix’s belt loops and shifted his weight just so. Just that small movement was torturous.

Nix gasped. “I like that ‘but,’” he said.

Dick laughed softly. “Sure you do,” he said. “You’re spoiled, is your problem. Get whatever you want.”

“You’re the one doing the spoiling,” Nix said, nipping at Dick’s neck. “You want to teach me a lesson, get up and go. But you won’t, will you, because I’m leaving in the morning, and you’re going to miss me.”

“I’m going to miss you,” Dick echoed, helpless in the face of the fact of the matter. He moved down Nix’s body as if drawn. Outside the tent the night sounds kept on, and Dick listened to every one of them with the one ear not plastered to Nix’s hip. And Nix was right, after all. Nobody came, save for Dick with his eyes screwed shut, and Nix with his hands in Dick’s hair telling him over and over to be quiet.

***

The day Dick left Europe was clear and cold, and he stood on deck and looked out at the retreating coastline until his nose was numb and drippy. The water that coursed along beside the hull was steely gray, frothing with a pale overlay of wake. He looked from the land to the water again and again until he could feel the lurch of the ship deep in his guts. He thought of Christianson losing his lunch over Sobel’s shoes, and instead of making him laugh the way it rightly should the memory made his throat tighten up. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and went below.

The ship was crowded to be sure, but less jam-packed than on the trip over. Nix’s hopes on that score, at least, had been well-founded. His cabin slept six, and was above the waterline, and that was such an improvement from the crossing to England that Dick thought he’d have to be crazy to hope for anything else. The food was just as bad as he remembered, with the exception of breakfast. The first morning Dick put away two plates of eggs and bacon.

He’d heard from Nix only twice since he’d left in September, the first time a picture postcard of the lions in Trafalgar Square that bore the inscription _Having a great time, glad you’re not here. —L.N._ He rolled his eyes at the card and tucked it into his pocket, and had been known in weaker moments to pull it out and puzzle over Nix’s spiky handwriting, imagining him hunched over the card, scribbling. Perhaps he, like Dick, took out pen and paper and thought to set down all sorts of thoughts that were best not voiced aloud, let alone written out where any old eyes might run over them. Dick had started a whole host of letters to Nix. He’d kept some of them, folded up in his journal, and the ones he didn’t keep he burned, or ripped into ever-smaller pieces.

The second time he heard from Nix was in response to the telegram he sent the day he learned his return date. God willing, he’d land in New York on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. According to Nix’s letter, he’d be there to meet him.

 _We’ll go for steaks,_ the letter said. _If there’s one thing I know for certain from a few thousand miles west of you it’s that you need one, and probably a stiff drink too, though you’d never admit it. We’ll go somewhere nice. I’m not good for much, but I can manage dinner reservations._

_You asked how things were. Lousy! I tried to tell Dad I’d be better off waiting to start work until I had a new hire to boss around, but he wasn’t having it. I’m writing to you now from my brand new office, far too early. I’m drinking a cup of coffee. Just coffee, thanks for asking. By the time you get back you’ll hardly recognize me. I’m thinking of growing a beard. Write back soon and tell me what you think._

Dick had half a mind to write back, simply, _NO_ , but he wasn’t sure it was worth the cost of the wire. So he decided to let Nix make his own decisions about facial hair, and settled for sailing back to New York with all speed. Tonight he lay prone on his bunk and reread Nix’s letter, smoothing his palm over the page, imagining he could feel the imprint of Nix’s pen. There was a blot of dark ink on one corner of the page; he fancied he could picture how Nix might have paused with nib set to paper and lost track of time. Nix at work, he thought. God help us.

Someone tapped on the siderail of the bunk, and Dick started, flipping the letter over guiltily although there was no easy way to read what was written there nor any reason to think the words especially damning. A head of pale hair was visible alongside the bunk, its owner grinning up at him in short order.

“Hey, Winters. They’re showing a movie in the mess. You game?”

Dick’s bunkmate was another paratrooper, a captain from the 517th named Williams. While they’d no shortage of things to talk about the familiarity made things worse somehow, made Dick ache rather unbecomingly for the men he missed and one man in particular. So he maybe wasn’t as good a friend to Williams as he could have been, but the voyage was only ten days. There were plenty of soldiers shipping back home who kept their own counsel, sat alone in the mess, stood up on deck at all hours staring out to sea. 

“No thanks,” Dick said, peering into Williams’s eager face. “I’m turning in. Tell me tomorrow if it was any good, will you?”

Williams nodded—“Suit yourself”— and quit the room. Dick sighed down at Nix’s letter, feeling low and strange. His guts churned more and more with every nautical mile the ship crept towards New York Harbor, and it was all wrong. He thought of Shifty, come to say goodbye, still whole and mostly innocent. 

_I don’t rightly know how to explain—_

The words had been running through Dick’s head at intervals ever since, and tucked away in his musty berth he realized that that was what he ought to have written to ask Nix. He’d have had two whole months’ head start, and Nix might not have figured it out completely, but Dick was certain he would at least have had something to say on the topic. How stupid he’d been not to think of it. He smacked at the paper in frustration, the crisp sound loud in the quiet cabin, the gesture provoking a wave of dizziness. 

Dick was no seaman; he couldn’t get used to the constant motion of the ship, the incessant roll and sway. He couldn’t get past the way the salt air soured to fishy in certain corners the further you got from abovedecks. Abruptly he felt ill, sweaty and confined, and he thought if he didn’t get out of the cabin he’d be sick. He felt a sudden surge of empathy for Christianson.

Dick folded up the letter once again and shoved it beneath his pillow. Then he slid down from the top bunk and got his boots on and strode into the corridor. He found the stairwell and began to climb, up and up, palm slick on the railing. He could smell the salt stronger now, denser, more like blood.

On deck he felt better. He ran his fingers through his hair and realized he’d forgotten to put on his cap. The damp hair at his temples went crispy, frozen in the night air, and he thought of Bastogne. But he didn’t feel cold now; when he leaned out over the railing and put his face into the wind he felt entirely numb, and as his eyes blurred with tears drawn forth by the coursing air he closed them and lost himself to the current and felt nothing at all.

Eventually he began to shiver, despite his hunger for the obliterating cold. He pried his fingers from the rail and turned to go back. Warming as he went, he took the stairs down a flight, then two and three, passed his deck and kept on going into the roiling bowels of the ship. He alighted far belowdecks. Already he could smell the sour odor of bodies in close quarters, a floating barracks. The tang of old sweat and tobacco smoke clung to the walls, to the olive drab hammocks that swung lazily in stacks, one on one on one. Men perched on them here and there, smoking and dealing cards. 

On the trip over to England Dick had come down here and spent as much time among them as he could stand. He remembered he’d felt sick then too, down below, and had felt sorry for the enlisted men who were stuck here, not that the officers’ quarters were much better. But he’d had Nix then, and Harry, and between the two of them any set of circumstances could be spun into a party.

He walked the length of the room, largely unnoticed save for a nod of acknowledgement here and there, and came out the other side. He found another set of stairs, past which the corridor continued down the length of the ship, lit by bulbs that hung at intervals and which only managed to thinly illuminate a foot or two of surrounding space before the warm dark dominated again. 

Maybe it was the patchy, rust-colored light that drew Dick in, or maybe he heard something, some small sound his conscious mind ignored. Either way, he moved past the stairwell and into the corridor. Pipes ran overhead, and he heard rather than saw water dripping somewhere in the distance, an unnerving sound below the waterline. As he pressed forward, light to light, whatever sounds he might have heard before began to grow louder and to coalesce into voices, into the scuffle of clothing, and Dick realized that someone was there. Two someones.

They were closer than he’d thought. Given more time he’d have retreated. He certainly wouldn’t have chosen to come upon them the way he did, one man backed up against the wall, shirt unbuttoned all down the front, fly open. No, Dick should never have seen this. The second man was taller, and he bent over the first vampirically, one big hand inside the the first man’s shirt, the other at his waist. There was no question what they were doing, and the way they sprang apart damned them further. Dick marked the precise moment when they fully saw him, their eyes snagging on the oak leaves at his lapel. He saw their faces change. He felt badly for them.

“Dammit,” said the tall man. 

He looked from Dick to his friend and back. Then he turned and took off down the corridor, the slap of his boots retreating into the dark. In the moment Dick found he hated him, both for leaving him alone with this pale, wretched soldier and for leaving, full stop.

“M-major--” 

He didn’t seem to know what to do, how to pull himself together. His hands hovered spasmodically in the air, as if they couldn’t decide whether to salute or to drift down to his fly and zip up. Dick couldn’t stand it. He looked at the floor; he didn’t want to see the man any longer, didn’t want the man to see him, recognize him in the mess and know that Dick was the one who’d done what he was about to do. He ought to march the man before his nearest superior, he ought to demand his name, rank, and serial number. He ought to force him to implicate the man who’d run away.

He could hear the man swallow, a wet snap. He started to speak, words creeping forth as through molasses. “Major, I—”

He had no idea what else he was going to say, Dick realized. He wanted to run, was wondering why he hadn’t run before when he had the chance.

Dick shook his head, and the man stopped talking.

“Be more careful,” Dick said flatly. 

The man gaped at him. His hands were clapped over the crotch of his trousers, and Dick couldn’t look anymore. He turned away and went back the way he’d come, walked back through the third class cabin and found the stairs he’d come down. He didn’t stop until he was back at his cabin and could collapse on his bunk, once again hot and sweaty but far too drained now to do anything about it. He felt seized by feeling. It flowed hotly through him, down his arms and out his fists, which he clenched and pounded into the mattress.

He was angry, though he couldn’t quite say why. Perhaps it was fear misplaced, he thought; perhaps he’d gone so long without feeling properly afraid that his mind could no longer grasp how to do it. When he’d hidden out in the bathroom in Austria listening to Nix deflect that runner, he hadn’t exactly been frightened of discovery. His heart had pounded, his adrenaline flowing, but the moment had seemed hazy and dreamlike, as if nothing much could possibly happen and if it did it would be something he could wake up from. 

But down in the belly of the ship tonight had been no dream, and Dick had killed men but he didn’t think he’d ever come so close to ruining one, to considering all the ways he in turn could be ruined. He thought again of writing to Nix.

_Dear Lew, tonight I saw two men together like we are._

But that wasn’t right, was it? Wasn’t there something altogether more wholesome about the two of them? Perhaps Dick only wished that were true. Perhaps…but no. At the very least, Dick thought, he wouldn’t have run. He didn’t think Nix would either, no matter who found them, no matter what might happen.

_Dear Lew, do you ever get to thinking it’s wrong?_

He sighed, and rolled over onto his belly. _I should’ve talked to him,_ he thought. _I should have told him_ —but his mind remained blank, and Dick couldn’t think of what he could have offered the man that would have been remotely helpful. Already Dick’s memory of his face was blurring and dissolving, already he was beginning to be uncertain of just what it was he’d seen. Maybe nothing, he thought. Maybe his mind was playing tricks, maybe whatever there was between him and Nix had gotten so far under his skin that he was going a little crazy. Maybe it was the end of the war. He scrubbed at his face with a hand and put the light out and tried to go to sleep.

_Because I never do, and sometimes I wonder if that isn’t the trouble._

***

They came into the harbor late in the afternoon. He and Williams packed up their bunk and went up onto the deck to join the crush of troops packing every square inch, five thousand short of the ship’s capacity but still eleven thousand strong. Williams took him by the arm and led him through the throng to the railing, so he could see that the crowd waiting on the dock more than matched the one on deck, doubled or tripled it even. Dick’s first thought was _Wow_ , and his second was _How will I find him?_

“This sure is something,” Williams said, voice thick. “It sure is something.” Dick nodded slowly, eyes trained on the crowd, imagining he could see Nix in every distant face. Someone grasped Dick’s shoulder, someone else slapped him on the back, and none of them knew one another but all of them were here together after all this time. A great cheer rose; somewhere onshore a band struck up _The Stars and Stripes Forever_ and Dick’s eyes filled embarrassingly.

The ship moved alongside the dock and the crowd kept cheering; all around him men hung over the side waving, calling to the waiting mass by name although recognition in the melee seemed impossible. Dick wouldn’t shout; he remembered suddenly that before the war he used to hate raising his voice in public, to call across the street to a passing friend. Funny, wasn’t it, the way you learned to do things without thinking about them, to feel nothing. Would that wear off, he wondered? He wasn’t sure he wanted it to.

Gradually the crush of bodies and luggage began to move forward. Dick moved with it, his heart quickening, and here alone among all these people he stared at the back of the man in front of him and let himself anticipate. He must’ve smiled; heck, he must’ve been beaming, because the man next to him jabbed him with an elbow and said “Good to be home, ain’t it,” and Dick just smiled harder, consciously now, and said yes.

Down the gangway; his palms sweating. He was smiling too hard. He felt as if everyone was looking at him, as if everyone would know just from the set of his body, though of course to think that way was ridiculous. The ship released her cargo to New York’s open arms as a vein coming open; the line of men reached the end of the gangway and bled into the crowd, and Dick thought that it hadn’t been since Eindhoven that he’d seen civvies break up a sea of drab like that. All the color seemed over-bright, here a woman’s lipstick, there a skirt, a child’s knit cap, a tie. The sun began to lower. A chilly breeze did its best to kick up but couldn’t cool much of anything in the press of bodies; he had his dress uniform on and he was sweating in it. His feet hit the dock and he was lost, unsure which direction to move in. He stopped dead, and the man behind him ran into his back.

“Hey!” he said to Dick, affronted, any earlier fraternity apparently diminished by one last body standing between him and his.

“Sorry,” Dick muttered. “Sorry.” He drifted to one side, scanning the crowd. The faces swam before him, all smiling, all looking ready to claim him as their own, as if he could just go up to some girl, kiss her, hop in her car and speed off to a new life. It might be easier, he thought darkly, than fitting himself back into the one he’d left. He guessed he could find a pay phone, though in the very next moment he realized he didn’t have Nix’s number, only his address, and wasn’t that just the dumbest thing, wasn’t that just like Nix to guess they could simply bump into one another here among twenty thousand people?

“Dick.”

He cast about him, still couldn’t make his eyes fix on anyone in particular, least of all the man he thought he heard. Before him was a woman, older, greying hair upswept. She looked into his face and opened her mouth.

_“Dick.”_

Hand on his shoulder, spinning him around. He was unprepared for Nix to be, suddenly, right there. He was clean-shaven, wearing a dark suit and tie and a crisp-looking hat. Dick hadn’t seen him out of uniform in so long he did what must have been a rather comical double take.

Dick’s brain was slow, his tongue clumsy, as if after all these weeks of thinking what to say he was suddenly fresh out of ideas. “You didn’t grow a beard,” was what he came up with.

Nix ran a hand over his face like he wasn’t entirely sure what Dick was talking about. “Oh,” he said. “No. Somehow I didn’t think you’d approve.”

His hand had fallen from Dick’s shoulder to his arm, just as Dick had somehow come to be clutching both of Nix’s. All around them the pier was filled with people in various stages of embracing. Nix pulled Dick closer. “Hi,” he said into Dick’s ear, and Dick shut his eyes hard and breathed in and vowed not to look again until he felt slightly less watery about the moment, until he could look Nix in the face without humiliating himself. He sighed bracingly, straightened, figuring he’d better back up now while he had his wits about him. He felt as if they were in some bower; it was hard not to, the way the crowd noise made a canopy, the way the band still played, the whole scene effervescent as a carnival midway. He might have been dreaming.

“C’mon, I’ve got a cab waiting,” Nix said. “I don’t want to know what the fare’s going to be.” 

“How long have you been here?”

Nix shrugged. “They said you’d dock at a quarter to four,” he said. “So I figured on a couple hours. Didn’t want to miss you. And anyway, it gave me a great excuse to take the day off.” 

Dick shook his head. Nix had his hands in his pockets, everything about the way he moved just the same as the last time they were here together, years ago now. Dick clapped him impulsively on the arm, and Nix’s whole face lit up. Now, as then, it was well worth a wine cellar.

The cab languished on the curb, the driver napping in a tent of newspaper. He came awake, grumbling, when Nix knocked on the window. “You were gone long enough,” he said. “Almost took off.”

“Took off nothing,” Nix said. “And in case you forgot, we agreed on double to wait as long as you had to.”

Dick felt vaguely horrified at the implied expense. “Lew, that wasn’t necessary.“

“Of course it was,” Nix said, sounding harassed. “Just get in, will you?”

Nix opened the back door and gestured inside, tossed Dick’s bag in after him. Dick dragged it onto his lap as far as he could stand. The footlocker he’d had shipped. It could wash up in the harbor in its own time, he figured. There was nothing much in it anymore.

Nix got in himself and told the driver an address, and the cab pulled away.

Dick decided he was sorry for the space the bag took up, though he really must be addled to think the two of them could sit pressed close in a car like this. He was struck by a memory, then; careering about by jeep in the early days in England, when the war still felt a bit like an adventure. All around them the red-roofed village, the sea of heath and bracken beyond. Once Nix talked a girl into letting him walk her dog and _it’s not even a euphemism, Dick, here he is right here, she says he’s a keen rabbiter._

A horn blared and he whirled to look for it, but the cab jerked away and he lost sight of which direction he’d been looking. Anyway, there were too many cars to tell apart. Dusk was coming on in earnest now and as they darted past row upon row of buildings the lights began to swirl. All this neon, and he remembered then he’d never properly been to New York before; that train ride up from Fort Benning was the first time. Nix looked out at the color-soaked streets like they were nothing special. Dick wondered if that was why he’d harped so on Chicago. Where could you go when New York bored you?

“Where are we going?” he asked.

Nix looked at him as if surprised to see him there. “The Waldorf,” he said, and from his tone and some deeply buried thread of memory Dick got the idea he should be impressed. From the front seat the cabbie whistled. Dick rubbed the back of his neck.

Nix turned to look at him. “All right?” he asked, and Dick nodded absently.

“They’re meeting us at seven,” Nix continued. “Cocktails. Won’t be too long, though. And then we’ve got a table in the Empire Room. I promised you that steak.”

“Who’s they?”

“Oh, didn’t I say? My folks. My sister, too, dammit, she can’t leave well enough alone.”

Dick was certain he’d known Nix had a sister; of course he’d have mentioned it, but now Dick couldn’t recall a single instance. 

He frowned. “Why’re they coming?” 

Good grief, but he sounded petulant, and not at all like himself, but outside the car windows the dusk was turning grey and purple and green and pink. Lights upon lights. He didn’t recognize a thing. If Nix should turn him out of the cab now he’d be hopelessly lost.

“Well, you asked me to have a word with Dad before you got here,” Nix said. “So I did. And we got to talking and he asked me when you were due back and I told him and then he suggested we all four get together, and wasn’t now as good a time as any. They want to meet you,” Nix said, his voice measured. He glanced at the driver, who had his eyes mercifully on the road.

“And then Blanche got wind of it and invited herself along, and look, I’m sure you’ll like her, Dick, and we’ll talk about the job and square things away and then—then you’ll have all the time you like to yourself. All right?”

“I’m going back to Lancaster in the morning,” Dick said, as the cab pulled up under the hotel awning. Dick’s door was yanked open, and no sooner had he righted himself and spilled out onto the asphalt than a dapper bellboy was snapping to, saluting him right there in front of the Waldorf Astoria. Dick was certain as he’d been about few other things that he’d feel more at home at the Eagle’s Nest—or Bastogne—than he felt right now.

“Welcome back, Major Winters,” chirped the bellboy, leaning in to read the nameplate on Dick’s uniform. He looked very proud of himself.

Dick just stared at him, vaguely aware that he was being impolite but unable to coax himself into a better reaction. At last the bellboy looked away and grabbed up Dick’s bag with an ease that implied a much more stolid build. He sprang up the hotel steps and lobbed it onto a shiny brass luggage cart. Next to the cart stood Nix, suddenly diminished in his suit. He was watching Dick, who had no choice but jog up the steps after him.

They had a suite on the topmost floor. What it must have cost Nix set Dick reeling, and he pledged instantly to try and avoid thinking about it. Two bedrooms, the doors to which opened out onto a fine sitting area appointed in creams and yellows, in gold brocade. At one end was a wet bar, which Nix eyed hungrily; at the other was a wall of windows. Dick watched himself reflected in them; when he moved his body rippled on the glass like a corpse pinned underwater.

“That’s a great view,” Nix said. “You’ll see tomorrow.”

Dick didn’t answer. Nix came alongside him then, stepped in front, hiding the wraith Dick was watching across the way. He reached out and curled his palm around the back of Dick’s neck. With his other hand he freed Dick’s tie from where it was tucked into the breast of his jacket, slid his fingers up to loosen the knot at Dick’s throat. Dick swallowed and fought the impulse to back away. Which was madness, really, because this was—

“Lew,” he said. “We’ve got to go down in a little while.”

“Mm. We’ve got time. And anyhow, they can wait if they have to.”

Nix had the tie wrapped sloppily round his hand, a long strip of dull olive, and now he wrapped it once more and let the line from Dick’s neck to his hand go taut. He kept that arm flexed; he meant to hold Dick there while he kissed him, probably, meant for it to be seductive, but the animal parts of Dick’s brain lit up with automatic dislike and his hands flew up to tangle with Nix’s.

“Come on, leave off. I—I want a shower.” 

Nix wasn’t listening. He slid his hand from Dick’s neck to the small of his back and let the tie go, and that was better, except that he’d tucked his face alongside Dick’s, was kissing him, and Dick was too tired, too prickly. His skin crawled in the humectant wool of his uniform. It was all wrong to feel this way tonight, and that incongruity was what troubled him most. He wrested free, got his palms square against Nix’s chest and shoved.

“What the hell,” Nix said as he stumbled backwards.

Dick couldn’t manage a reply, just waved him off and allowed himself to collapse on the nearer of the two sofas. He sat there with his head in his hands, breathing in and out and staring at the luxurious pile of the carpet. Somewhere a clock was ticking; surely it was nearly time to go, time to look presentable. He felt scattered to the corners of the room, a fine spray over everything.

From the periphery he could hear Nix at the bar, the predictable clink of ice cubes on glass. Presently he came and sat next to Dick and pressed a glass of water into his hand. He had a whisky for himself, and he knocked it against Dick’s drink automatically.

“Cheers to you, and all that,” Nix said. He took a sip and set the whisky on the low glass-topped table that ran the length of the sofa, and then he sat back and regarded Dick. “Now what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Dick said.

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not,” Dick said, profoundly irritated. “I’m tired, that’s all. And I stink. And the last thing I want is to—to—”

“To meet my family?” Nix offered.

It sounded terrible put so baldly. Dick tried and failed to think of something else to say, to soften up the words somehow, to deflect or even lie outright. He couldn’t think of a way to do it. Not when Nix had come out and said exactly what he’d been thinking. Anyway, they were nose to nose, and Nix knew him too well.

“Not like this,” Dick said.

“Well, hell,” Nix said. “Can’t say I blame you. I don’t want to meet my family most of the time.” He took up his drink again. “Here, we’ll cancel,” he said. “I’ll call them and say it’ll have to be some other time.”

Dick looked at his watch; it was nearly six-thirty. “It’s too late,” he said. “They’ll be on their way, and you can’t exactly go down and—and make my excuses. No, really,” he said to Nix’s skeptical look. “I’ll have a drink of water and clean up. It’ll be fine.” He drained his glass by way of demonstration and got up from the sofa.

“Suit yourself, I guess,” Nix said. “I could go and make your excuses, you know. Be happy to. You’re not beholden to anyone, Dick. Not anymore; not here.”

Dick swallowed. “I guess it takes some getting used to.” He unbuttoned his jacket and shrugged out of it, draped it over the back of the sofa.

“You got clean clothes? I brought extra,” Nix said. “Fit won’t be perfect, but you’ll pass muster downstairs.”

“No,” Dick said. “I’ll put this back on.”

Nix nodded. “I, uh. I wore my ODs around for a couple weeks too.”

“Yeah.” Dick jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathroom. “I’ll just—”

“Sure,” Nix said. “Take your time.”

“Won’t be a minute,” Dick said. “Have a drink for me, will you?” He made himself smile at Nix, a big wide one, which was suspicious as anything from the grimace he got back.

The bathroom was the most beautiful place Dick had ever been, all marble and gold fixtures, the stone like ermine. He undressed quickly and looked at himself in the mirror, a poor showing by comparison. His skin was sallow against the surrounding white, blotched unflatteringly with pink. Nix had left a mark on his neck. He ran his fingers over it, scratched over the place until it bloomed, until he thought lips and teeth might not spring immediately to mind. He wanted badly to run a bath, but he thought he’d only resent having to leave it, so he showered economically, soaped and rinsed twice, towelled himself dry. He dressed in the bedroom and came out into the sitting room buttoning his shirt.

Nix looked up from the sofa. “Better?”

Dick nodded. “I guess it’s almost time,” he said. “Shall we?”

Nix looked at his watch and shrugged. He finished his drink and got up and plucked Dick’s jacket from its resting place on the back of the sofa. He came over to Dick and stood square in front of him, his gaze appraising and heated enough to make Dick nervous about looking him in the eyes. He watched Nix’s mouth instead.

Moving with a care Dick didn’t quite recognize, Nix buttoned Dick’s last button, took up his tie and looped it around Dick’s neck as if reversing his earlier actions. He flipped the ends into a careful knot, eased it up to Dick’s throat. Dick felt fussed over, which should have been embarrassing but was instead oddly soporific. He thought if Nix kept at it his eyes might fall closed.

“Sorry about before,” Nix said quietly.

“Don’t be,” Dick said. “I don’t know what my problem is.”

“It’s strange, is all,” Nix said. “Coming back.”

“You seem to be managing.”

Nix laughed. “Don’t get used to it. I’m sure it’ll wear off soon enough.”

“You were right in your letter, you know. I barely recognize you.” He put his arms around Nix’s waist. His mouth was red the way it always got when he drank and the color was up in his cheeks. That suit, Dick thought. It was something else. He’d seen men in suits every day of his life, but this…

“We should go,” Nix muttered. “Put your jacket on.”

“In a minute,” Dick said. He felt a little looser now, a little predisposed to recklessness. This, he realized, was the moment they should have had on the pier. He leaned in and kissed Nix, just once; closed-mouthed but not quite chaste, the sort of kiss that began sweetly and progressed rapidly from there. Nix was the only reason Dick knew about different sorts of kisses.

“There,” he said, pretending to ignore Nix’s flummoxed expression. “Now we can go.”

***

They met Blanche first. She was the kind of girl Dick’s mother would’ve called a real firecracker. She fairly shrieked from across the hotel lobby and ran to meet them, throwing herself into Dick’s arms with such alacrity that he was forced to catch her up, thinking all the while that he must have been mistaken, that they must’ve met somewhere along the line and he’d forgotten it somehow.

“Oh, forgive me,” she said when they’d parted. “It’s only that I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.”

“Likewise,” Dick lied. She looked at him like she could see right through him, and leaned up to press a lipsticked mouth to her brother’s cheek. Nix made a face and rubbed at the vermilion smudge she’d left in her wake. Dick got the impression Blanche splashed paint wherever she went. 

“Lewis,” she said. “You didn’t tell me your friend was a redhead.”

Nix coughed. “Didn’t seem relevant,” he said. “Look, let’s get at least one in before they show up, shall we?”

They took a low table in the lounge. The room was dim; what light there was was rosy and flattering. Blanche sat across from him and ordered champagne: “better make it Moet, George, this poor man is a major in the Army come all the way back from Europe just today.”

“Blanche, he doesn’t drink,” Nix said.

Blanche rolled her eyes. “Of course he drinks.” 

“I’m telling you, he doesn’t damn well drink.” Nix was fiddling with the silky fringe on the tablecloth, flipping it back and forth. He was agitated, but somehow more solidly Nix than anything else Dick had seen tonight. 

“It’s all right, Lew.” Dick said. “We’re celebrating, right?”

Blanche shot Nix a triumphant look, then favored Dick with a smile. Her lips gleamed in the flickering tea-lights. They were full like Nix’s, and she had his dark hair and eyes. When the champagne came the waiter poured a sip and offered it to Dick to try, and Nix laughed and shook his head. 

“Better give it to her,” Dick said. “She seems to know what she’s talking about.”

Blanche took the flute and tipped its contents neatly down her throat. “Perfect,” she said. “Now serve the major first, will you? He looks like he needs it.”

“He’s needed it for at least three years,” said Nix, still absorbed in the tablecloth.

“Since he met you, I’ll bet.”

Nix snorted. “Fair point,” he said, and Dick laughed.

The waiter poured his champagne and pretended to ignore them. Dick watched the golden liquid bubble in his glass and did likewise. When their flutes were all filled he raised his up, realizing only when it was held aloft that he had no idea what to say that could possibly be palatable in this place, distant as it was to everything he thought of when he thought of the war. Even Nix, who’d been his constant, seemed suddenly not to fit.

Nix and Blanche put their glasses up to his, as if both had had the same impulse: keep the ball in the air, stop momentum from grinding to a halt the way it threatened to. And that—well, that was very much like the war, wasn’t it.

“To, uh,” said Nix. “To reunions.”

Dick pressed his lips together. “Cheers,” he allowed.

Blanche took a swallow of her champagne. “God, I’m glad it’s over,” she said tonelessly. “It got a little old, you know, people dying all over the place.”

And there was no way to argue with that, nor anything much that seemed appropriate to follow it with. They sat and drank in silence. Nix let his knee fall against Dick’s under the table, at ease until something in the foyer caught his eye. He straightened up, looked past Blanche into the room beyond. He winced. 

“Drink up, kids,” he said, with no small amount of melodrama. “Company’s coming.”

Dick had always suspected that Nix protested altogether too much when it came to his parents, that he’d begun to hate them in the reflexive way native to most teenagers and had just never quite got past it. Dick hadn’t been immune; he’d had a season or so of rebelling in small ways. But the simple fact was that, in the end, he’d never quite seen the point. There’d never been a moment when he hadn’t been able to take the long view in matters involving his family. There were times he listened to Nix talk about his and had to bite his tongue, stayed from speaking his mind only by the fact that he understood there were particularities to families known to them alone. To an observer, even to Nix, his own childhood might have seemed spartan, demanding, possibly cruel. But to Dick it was simply reality, just as whatever injustices Stanhope Nixon had wrought must be indelibly real to his son.

And here he was now, in the flesh. He was built like Nix, solidly, though Stanhope was slightly stooped and softer around the middle, and possessed of a thick mustache. Dick was met with a sudden flash of Nix thirty or so years on, and wasn’t certain what to think.

Blanche sprang up and kissed him on the cheek, and Dick looked across the table in time to see Nix’s face freeze, then contort into a wide smile. They shuffled to their feet as one, and Dick stuck out a hand just as Nix said, gruffly, “Dad.”

Stanhope seemed not to hear Nix; he took Dick’s hand and pumped it once, twice. Dick introduced himself, and Stanhope looked him over like a man appraising a piece of machinery, the workings of which he was impressed by but didn’t quite care to understand. 

“That’s a hell of a uniform,” he said. “Lewis, you should’ve worn yours.” 

Nix didn’t reply. As if by some unseen signal they all began to move towards the dining room. Nix grabbed up the champagne bottle and carted it along, not bothering with a glass. Dick’s was still mostly full, and he carried it apart from himself as if it were a live grenade.

“Where’s Mom?” Blanche asked.

“Under the weather,” said Stanhope, and Dick didn’t miss Nix’s lone bark of laughter. What that was about, he didn’t know.

They sat at a round table, lit with tall candles and draped with a snowy cloth. The settings reminded Dick of all that silver he’d split with Harry in Berchtesgaden. He hoped his mother liked it. Knowing her it would live out the rest of all their lives packed away in the box he’d shipped it home in, and that was frankly fine with him. Now, though, its lookalikes would be put to good use, sunk into pats of butter the size of a silver dollar and spread on rolls that steamed when broken open. Nix needn’t have brought in the champagne; there was wine to float an armada, but he kept the bottle at his elbow anyway and took great slugs from it at intervals. Nobody said anything, and eventually the waiter came and took away his untouched glass.

“Well, Dick,” Stanhope said, looking over the top of his menu. “I know it’s tiresome to mix business and pleasure, but Lewis wouldn’t stop talking about getting something down in writing as soon as humanly possible. Seems to think you’ll fly the coop on us.”

Dick was chewing on a piece of bread, and he nearly choked to see Nix’s face. He was bright red, which he tried to cover with an overlarge gulp of champagne. “Dad—”

“His exact words were that you’d be in high demand as soon as you stepped foot back on home soil, and I’d be a fool to let you slip.” He quoted Nix at a slight remove, as if to help conjure him saying the words.

“That does sound like him,” said Blanche. “Lewis and his manias. You should get him to tell you about his boats.”

“Boats?”

Nix glared at him, which would have been funny if he hadn’t seemed so deadly serious. Dick thought of kicking him under the table, but if he did he feared Nix might actually explode. Heedless of this small drama, Stanhope Nixon continued talking.

“So, Dick,” he said. “Would I?”

“Sir?”

“Would I be a fool not to hire you on?”

Nix shot a glance at him, having schooled his face expressionless. Dick felt his prior anger creep back, like an itching scab. He felt, impotently, that his response either way didn’t matter at all. The course of things was already set out; the fact of his presence here felt like nothing more than some elaborate joke, though whether it was played by the elder Nixon on his son or vice versa he couldn’t say. Neither possibility impressed him.

He was tired, and they hadn’t even ordered. Blanche had her nose in her wine glass; he could see by the creases around her eyes that she was laughing. He had to say something.

“I—”

“Of course you would,” Nix said before Dick could get anything else out. “And if you’re waiting around for a ringing endorsement from him you’ll be waiting all night. He’s too damn modest, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” 

Dick swallowed. “I can send along a resume,” he said weakly. “And, uh, character references.”

“Do that, then,” said Stanhope, still looking at Nix with something like amusement. Nix stared back stonily, until finally he faltered and took up his champagne again. 

“Well,” Stanhope said, putting up a hand to hail the waiter. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Get the steak, Dick. There’s no point in eating out if you don’t get the steak.”

Dick got the steak—filet mignon, to be precise— and it was the best thing he’d put in his mouth in years. Maybe ever. He felt contrary about having it ordered for him, which was what had happened, but then Stanhope had ordered it all around, like they were a pack of kids too young to be given a choice. Dick certainly felt young then, as if his whole sojourn to war had been a child’s game, Nix merely his playmate. 

At the meal’s conclusion Dick decided he was no closer to determining whether or not he actually had a job. But he’d gotten through the evening, and his belly was full, and he had to keep reminding himself he wasn’t dreaming the locale. The Waldorf didn’t matter; no, it was the street beyond, and the coursing stream of cars, and beyond it the countryside and Pennsylvania to the south and west. He’d see it all tomorrow, steaming back along the way he’d come. Not quite the green fields he’d dreamed of, hardened under frost, but close enough. You couldn’t help the season, after all.

He wanted to go to bed.

The elevator man looked them up and down when Nix asked for the penthouse, and for the first time tonight Dick wondered how they seemed together. He thought he’d ask Nix about it later; he had the bizarre impulse to ask Blanche, but she was long gone, whirling out of the hotel the way she’d come, trailing a cloud of perfume.

“She’s something,” he said to Nix on the way up.

“She was engaged,” Nix said. “Old family friend; we lived together a semester in New Haven. He was killed in the Pacific, at Guadalcanal.”

“I’m sorry,” Dick said automatically. “I wish I’d known; I’d’ve told her.” 

Nix shrugged. “I’ve never said it to her. She never told me; I only knew about it ‘cause my mother put it in a letter.”

“Jesus,” Dick said, fatigue loosening his tongue.

“Tell me about it.” He elbowed Dick. “See what I said about meeting my family? A real laugh riot. Aren’t you lucky. I mean, I guess I would’ve found out eventually. That’s another thing about coming home, Dick; bit by bit you find out everyone who’s not.”

The elevator chimed for their floor, and Nix dropped a dollar on the operator’s lap as the doors opened. Dick trailed him out, let him fit the key in the lock and shut the door behind them. Dick let out a breath. They were as alone now as they’d ever been.

“Hey,” said Nix, stepping closer than he’d been allowed in company. “I’m sorry about tonight. Hell of a shitty homecoming that made for.”

“I’m not—” He meant to say he still wasn’t sure of the point, but he got the feeling that line of questioning wouldn’t lead anywhere good. So he let the matter of the job lie, for now anyway. 

“Let’s go to bed,” he said. 

Nix didn’t argue. “I’ll go wash up.”

Dick undressed and got in bed to wait for him. Between cool sheets, the quilt a pleasing weight across his legs, Dick felt himself begin to drowse. He didn’t see Nix come back into the bedroom, didn’t feel him crawl in beside him. From one moment to the next he was simply there, his body running along the length of Dick’s.

“Thank God,” Nix sighed, throwing an arm across his chest.“Thought I’d lose my mind if you didn’t get your ass back here.”

There was a bad joke to be made, but Dick was too tired to take a stab. He settled for sentimental, which meant he rolled face to face with Nix and smiled at him, dopey with exhaustion. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

“You know I saw you every day since Toccoa? Every damn day. I missed—well, forget it. It’s embarrassing, the things I missed. I’ll tell you sometime when I’m drunker.”

“Okay,” Dick said dreamily. He sighed. “I’m falling asleep.”

“It’s all right.”

“I thought you’d want—”

“Oh, I do. I’d rather you were conscious, though. So go to sleep.” Nix brushed Dick’s hair off his forehead, fit his fingers to Dick’s scalp, and Dick’s last thought before drifting off was that he hadn’t set an alarm.

He woke before dawn anyway. Nix had rolled to face the window, outside which the night had begun to thin. Dick was flush against him, back to front. He couldn’t think of the last time they’d been close like this. Had they ever slept together this way, so carelessly? He shifted, his shorts dragging between his skin and Nix’s. He was half hard; he tried to remember if he’d been dreaming of anything. He’d always been shocked to wake up this way; it felt a little like a betrayal, as though his body had been getting up to something without him. Outside he could hear the oceanic sound of traffic. He was reminded of the pier, of the way the sound had seemed to wash over them, a concealment. He kissed Nix on the shoulder and he rolled over, stirring, rubbing his eyes. His hair stuck up at odd angles.

“You gotta go?” he asked, voice thick with sleep.

“Not yet.”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” Dick said. “Lew—”

“Yeah,” Nix said, answering the question Dick hadn’t asked. 

Dick lay back. He stretched his arms out alongside and Nix crawled over him, biceps trembling like he was doing a pushup. He let himself down and took Dick’s face in his hands. He was warm and he smelled good, like himself, and he was all tucked in the hollow of Dick’s hip. There was a streetlamp beaming from outside the window, light running like milk over the ceiling. 

“Tell me what you missed,” Dick said. 

“Nice try,” Nix said. “I’m not drunk.” 

“I think I am,” Dick said. 

He shut his eyes and felt Nix kiss him, opened his mouth for it. Yet another kind of kiss; he was beginning to think he should put together a field guide. Nix moved against him, put his hand in Dick’s hair and held him fast, let his lips trail from Dick’s mouth to his ear so he could talk, because Nix liked to talk. And when he talked he got Dick red in the face and Nix liked that too, so much so that he hardly seemed to care about his own pleasure. It was enough to roll off to one side and work Dick over slowly, voice so quiet up against his ear saying _that’s it, Dick, that’s it._

Dick forced his eyes open. He watched Nix’s tongue swipe back and forth along his teeth and groped around until his hands found Nix’s rough cheek, eyelashes and the curve of his nose. If he looked down he’d see himself in Nix’s hand and he knew the look on his face would be, as ever, one of surprise. 

He thought again of those two men on the troopship. What would they have done in the dark if he hadn’t come along? Probably one would’ve gone down on his knees and taken the other into his mouth, probably one would have taken the other all the way into his body. Neither, he felt sure, would have been surprised. 

“I want you,” Dick blurted. “The way we talked about.” 

Nix froze. He sat up slowly. “What, now?” 

“We’re both awake,” Dick said. “And we’re both--” He glanced down between them. 

“Yeah, okay,” Nix said. “I got you.” 

“Well?” 

Nix sat up, scrubbed a hand over his face. “ _Well_ , If I’d known I’d have been a little better prepared. Lit candles and laid out rose petals and everything.” 

“If we haven’t got rose petals, what’s the point,” Dick said, because Nix’s face had gone ruddy and his voice had lapsed into the sardonic drawl he got when he was trying not to seem nervous. He slid closer on the mattress and slung an arm around Nix and patted him on the cheek. 

“Cheer up, Lewis,” he said. 

Nix only shook his head and smiled ruefully, climbing out of the bed and prowling over to the bathroom. He came back and tossed a jar of Vaseline at Dick, who caught it and turned it over in his hands. 

“You know it’s just like you, forging ahead,” Nix babbled. “And anyway, of course you wouldn’t be nervous about it, you’re not the one who’s going to--” 

“Oh,” Dick said. He swallowed. “I thought I might.” 

“What?” Nix dropped back down onto the bed. “Wait, really?” 

Dick shrugged. “I--I like the thought of it,” he said. He got the impression it was something he ought to feel bad about, but he found he couldn’t. Not with Nix. 

“Well, hell,” said Nix. “C’mere.” 

He sat cross-legged, and Dick sat cross-legged, and they were close enough that their knees knocked together. Dick leaned forward to kiss Nix with a tenuous balance he lost quickly, half-crawled, half-fell into Nix’s lap laughing and Nix caught him and looked at him like Dick had never imagined anyone looking at him because he hadn’t--well, it hadn’t ever come up. 

In the cameo lamplight they both looked pink, so Dick didn’t worry so much about the colors he turned when they were lying on the bed and Nix kissed him first on the mouth and then on the chest and then on the navel and then further down.

He could hear Nix talking into the quilt, into the inside of his thigh. He couldn’t quite make the words out and it was better that way, he thought, because what Nix was saying was embarrassing and maybe not exactly meant for him. He let Nix keep talking, nonsense about all the things he wanted to do, all the places he wanted to put his mouth.

“You’re ridiculous,” he said, because it distracted him from where he could feel Nix’s tongue. He sank the fingers of one hand into Nix’s hair and kept them there. By the time Nix laid back over him, breathing hard and wiping his mouth, Dick felt syrupy and lax in the joints and like he wanted to go back to sleep, except that he didn’t at all. 

“How should we?” Nix asked. 

“Like this,” Dick said, so he could look Nix in the face. 

It wasn’t quite the way Dick had imagined. He sweated and gasped and probably made the same face he’d made catching shrapnel in the shin in Carentan, and decided he was glad Nix hadn’t seen it to make the comparison. But he appreciated it, in the end. Dick liked to set his body to a task; somehow it seemed right that this too should require a kind of physical remaking. 

Nix kept his hands on Dick, on his flanks, on his knees. On the whole he looked more fretful than excited. “You okay?” he asked, when he’d mostly settled between Dick’s legs. 

Dick took a breath, shallow and experimental. “Yeah. How’s it feel?” 

“Like jumping into that damn lake,” Nix said. He was shaking. 

Dick nodded. “Sure does.” 

He pushed up on one arm to find Nix’s mouth, and Nix caught him around the waist, shifting in a way that made Dick cry out and drag his teeth over Nix’s shoulder. Dick was borne down to the bed again, and this time the rhythm came easier. When they began to move together in earnest Nix grinned at him, made some smart remark or other. And that was so good, felt so like home that Dick laughed and let gladness sink all the way down into his guts.

***  
He let Nix sleep until late morning, until he’d checked his wristwatch against the train schedule more than once and done enough mental arithmetic to net them just enough time to get something to eat before he had to leave for the station. 

He hadn’t dressed, just put his shorts back on and the hotel robe on over. He called up for coffee and politely refused the busboy’s offer to bring it inside for him, and when told he couldn’t pay cash, that the coffee would by necessity be added to the bill (“Sorry, sir, it’s hotel policy”) he expressed his frustration by leaving a generous tip. 

He climbed onto to the bed and slid across to the prone lump that was Nix under the covers, drew the comforter back and shook him awake.

“Nix,” he said quietly.

“Mmm,” Nix said by way of reply. He rolled onto his back and frowned up at Dick. “Don’t throw anything on me.” 

“All I’ve got is coffee, and I won’t waste it,” Dick said. “Get up, will you? My train’s at one and I want breakfast first.” 

“Oh, you do, do you? Rouse a man at all hours to be--to be _ravished_ and then you come sniffing around for breakfast in the morning. I see how it is.” 

Dick snorted. “Ravished? Is that what you did?” 

“Yeah, that’s what I did.” 

“Huh,” said Dick. “I’m going to have to think about that, see if I agree.” To which Nix muttered something about giving Dick something to think about and wrestled him down to the mattress until Dick conceded that, fine, he’d been ravished after all, and thoroughly so. 

“But I really am hungry,” he added, to which Nix made a noise of mock-disgust and allowed himself to be chased from the bed and into his clothes. 

They found a diner a few blocks from Penn Station that was still serving breakfast, and they got eggs and bacon and more coffee. They ate in companionable silence for awhile and when Nix was finished he pushed his plate away. Dick snatched up an uneaten triangle of toast and spread it with margarine, and Nix shook his head. 

“What?” 

“Nothing. It’s just strange, is all. Sitting here. Why, I could take you home with me. We could go right up in the elevator and I could show you the view out my bedroom window over the park. It’s nice. There’s a couple of pigeons that used to nest outside; I wonder if they’re still there.” 

“Haven’t been to see?” 

Nix bit his lip. “No,” he said. “That’s right, I guess you couldn’t come home with me. And knowing Katherine she’s sold the place already. Lucky bitch. She’ll make a killing.” 

Dick winced at the language. Across the table Nix slipped his flask out and augmented his coffee, and Dick wondered what it said about him that he saw that flash of silver and was possessed not by concern but by a keen and tender nostalgia. 

“So,” Nix went on. “Lancaster. You looking forward to it?” 

Dick shrugged. He wasn’t sure there were words for what came up when he thought of going home. He was dreading it; he could hardly wait; he was certain he’d be gutted by every last thing. That first year or so in the service he’d gone home as often as he could, soaked it up, and it was only now, an hour or so from boarding a train, that he realized part of him had left not expecting to return. 

“How’d you feel about New Jersey?” 

Nix rolled his eyes. “It’s New Jersey,” he said, seemingly thrilled to be allowed to continue complaining. “It contains my father’s house, and my office, for God’s sake--Dick, I have an _office_ \--and there’s nowhere decent to get a drink. Not to mention, uptight redheads are in grievously short supply. Which brings me to another question.” 

“Oh?” 

“Are you planning on coming back?” 

Dick peered into his empty coffee cup. The waitress must have had her eye on them, because she appeared tableside with the pot and seemed to pour it out for an interminably long time, Nix watching him unflinchingly through the steaming stream of liquid. She left; he had the sudden impulse to dump in all the cream on the table to hold Nix off. 

“Your father didn’t exactly engrave an invitation,” he said. 

“My father’s an asshole,” Nix said. “And the fact is, it’s my name on that office door now, or it will be soon enough. And I say you’ve got a job if you want it.” 

Dick did pour the creamer in then, steered the spoon round until the coffee faded to a uniform dun. Again he wondered what on earth the point of the previous evening had been. A show, maybe. Well, Stanhope Nixon had liked the costumes, at least. And they’d all gotten a steak out of the deal. He ought to be thrilled; instead he thought longingly of the train. C’mon, he said to himself. Buck up. Across the table Nix looked about a hairsbreadth from being rather stoically gutted, and the knowledge made Dick feel as if he were first in the stick again, staring at the red light.

“Well if I’ve got a job,” he said slowly, “then sure, I’ll come back.”

“Because you don’t have to, you know. Because I was here, and you were over there, and I just--I just thought you might have worked something else out in the meantime.” 

“I didn’t,” Dick said.

“Oh,” said Nix. “Well. Good.” He was doing something peculiar with his face, and it struck Dick suddenly that he was trying not to smile.

“So when do I start?” Dick asked. “Boss.” He added this last to tip Nix over, and it worked like a charm, like a bottle. Nix, flushed and beaming, had to duck his head and light a cigarette. Heady, Dick thought, to realize you could do that. 

“I think I’m prepared to be a little flexible with your start date,” Nix said, his voice pinched with the smoke. “Especially in light of recent events.” He exhaled. “I guess you’ll be home for Christmas.” 

“I’d planned on it.” 

“Start in January, then,” Nix said. “Gives you some time at home. Gives me some time to burn the whole operation down and put us both out of a job.” 

“I don’t know,” Dick said carefully. “You know me, I go crazy with too much time on my hands. What if I came up after Christmas?” 

“Okay,” Nix said. He was still smiling. “Sure. Come up for New Year’s. I’m sure I can find us some trouble to get into, though we might have to venture further afield than Nixon, New Jersey.” 

“Wherever the train takes us, right?” Dick looked at his watch. “And speaking of trains, mine’s due in fifteen minutes.” 

“Damn,” Nix said. He swallowed the rest of his coffee and chased it with a clandestine sip from his flask. 

Dick shot him a look. He tried to withhold judgement, and he did a decent job most of the time. But here they were home again, and Nix drinking in the middle of the afternoon seemed worthy of interrogation. 

“What?” Nix said. “You’re leaving, and I’m a little broken up.” 

“Don’t ever do that on account of me,” Dick said, rummaging in his pocket. He had his mind on the bill--this, at least, wouldn’t fall victim to Nix’s profligate generosity. 

“Too late, friend,” Nix said. Out of nowhere, he produced a crumpled quantity of cash that more than covered the tab and dumped it on top of the ticket in the center of the table. 

“Lew, come on.” 

Nix waved him off. “Forget it. When you move in you can start paying your way. For now, it’s my treat.” 

Dick shook his head and got up from the table, straightening his jacket as he did. “You don’t have to--” 

“What?”

“Never mind. C’mon and walk me to the station, will you?” 

“Yeah, I’d better. Who knows where you’ll end up if I don’t. As it is, you’ll probably doze off and wake up in California or someplace.” 

The walk to the station was largely silent, neither of them sure quite what to say, neither of them eager to part again so soon. As they walked Dick’s thoughts wandered back to private matters: to the morning, to Nix’s sweat, to the way his breath at the end had come in little gasps. Afterwards Nix had slumped on top of him and Dick had been too wrung out to make fun, tell him to move himself over. He’d just lain there feeling sated and clammy. Nix diminished and slipped out of him with a soft curse, the strangest part of the affair by far. He’d shuddered and Nix had kissed him, laughed uneasily. 

“Sorry,” Nix said, and tensed as if waiting for some profound expression of disgust. But by now Dick had long since seen the worst of what bodies could do, and even if he hadn’t there was nothing much Nix could do with his that Dick wasn’t predisposed to like. 

He’d kissed Nix then by way of reassurance, leaned up and bussed him on the cheek the way he couldn’t do now on the platform. They stood opposite one another. Nix’s hands were back in his pockets and he rocked from heel to toe over and over. Dick wanted to tell him to stop, that all this fractiousness was driving him crazy.

“You should write,” he said instead. 

“To you?” 

Dick nodded. 

“It’s only a month,” said Nix. 

“So? Write anyway.” 

“I’m no good at it,” Nix groused, shuffling his foot along on the dirty pavement. He sounded like a schoolkid being asked for a book report. 

“Send me a postcard, then,” Dick said. “Or don’t. I guess I’ll live either way.” 

The train was going; the crowd was moving towards the doors and Dick thought you must be able to tell the way they lagged. They’d stand and pick at one another until goodbye was the more comfortable option. Was this what men and women did? Dick didn’t know. 

“Well,” Nix said. “Say hello to your parents for me.” 

“Of course.” 

“And Ann.” Nix had never met Ann; he’d only met Dick’s mother and father once. 

“Bye, Lew.” 

“Be seeing you,” Nix said. 

He gave Dick a tight, aborted little wave, and then he turned and walked back down the platform without a second look. Dick watched his retreating back too long, long enough to decide that he didn’t quite like the way they’d left things. Funny what he could find to quibble over, now the stakes were lower. Before Normandy they’d shaken hands and walked off in different directions, and that had been that. Before Normandy he doubted he’d spent any time at all mulling over the particular angle of Nix’s shoulders as he went up the steps into the station and out of sight. 

Dick shook his head and went into the train and found a seat by the window, and as soon as the engine pulled out and he’d shown his ticket he leaned his head against the glass and fell asleep. 

***

Home was strange. He hadn’t expected it not to be, but that didn’t make it any less dizzying to walk home from the station wearing his uniform, shouldering his bag. The people he passed on the street looked him up and down and knew the moment for what it was, and that bothered Dick, made him feel bared somehow. He wanted a change of clothes more than he ever had in his life. 

He came into the house in the late afternoon and found his mother in the kitchen, chopping potatoes. When he called out to her she dropped the knife and a cube of russet slid off the counter and rolled beneath the kitchen table, and as he stood there in her arms, his nose in her hair, all he could think of was letting go and kneeling to pick it up.

“You look tired,” his mother said, and all he could do was nod. 

“I think I’ll go upstairs awhile,” he said, and she said all right but she watched him all the way to the door, and he stood on the stairs for a long time before he heard her walk back across the room, resume the metronome tic of blade against cutting board. 

His room was as neat as he’d left it. He was certain his mother had been up, dusting, but otherwise he might’ve been coming home after a day at work. Only...little things were missing, weren’t they: the water glass he used to keep on the bedside table because he woke up sometimes in the night and wanted a drink. The book he kept beside it. His desk was cleared of papers, free of quotidian flotsam, and in the air hung the faint mustiness of a space that’s been kept shut up. 

He opened the window. The breeze was chilly but he found he wanted it in the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and took his boots off, his socks after them; the ribbing had left impressions on the pale skin of his ankles and he rubbed at them idly til they began to fade. 

He got up again, the floor cool on his bare feet. He went over to the chest of drawers along the wall and opened the drawers up. Here socks, here underwear, here a folded-up collection of work shirts. He took out one that was a little worse for wear and that he’d relegated to the house even before he left, a dusty blue cotton. From the closet he retrieved a pair of khaki pants. He took off his uniform, hung it up. He dressed again. The clothing seeming to hang at odd angles, drape against his body in an unfamiliar way. He looked in the mirror. The man looking back at him seemed the same as ever, though of course he wasn’t; Dick stood in his bedroom now with a war behind his eyes. 

He tugged at his collar and winced, and went to find another pair of socks to put on. 

He floated down to dinner like a ghost. His mother was beside herself. His father kept clapping him on the back and wiping at his eyes, and Ann looped her arm through his and only acquiesced to letting go so they could both eat unencumbered. So Dick didn’t have to talk, not really; he didn’t have to do anything. He simply had to exist in the room. He might’ve been back at the Waldorf staring down Nix’s father. 

“So what’ll you do?” his mother asked. “Now it’s all over.” 

“They’ll hire you back on at Edison no problem,” said his father. 

“I, uh,” Dick started. “I was offered a job, remember? I wrote you about it. In New Jersey. My buddy Lew’s family’s got a nitration plant; he’s taking it over, and he said he’d take me on.” 

“What’d you say his name was again?” 

“Nixon,” said Dick. “Lewis Nixon.” He speared a piece of potato and shoveled it into his mouth to give himself something to do besides smile, which was what he usually wanted to do when he talked about Nix.

“Nixon,” his father said. “Nixon Nitration?” 

“That’s the one.” 

“They’re that plant that blew up back in the twenties. Almost took out the whole town.” 

“Oh,” said Dick. “I--I hadn’t heard.” 

“Takes something to come back from that, doesn’t it?” 

“I guess it does,” Dick said, and took the ensuing silence as tacit approval. 

The nice thing about coming back from a war, Dick thought, was that you could be forgiven for reticence, for disappearing upstairs after coffee and pie. Outside the night had clouded over, and Dick could smell a sharpness to the air that reminded him of Bastogne, that tang of ozone that always seemed to herald snow. They hadn’t been there yet, a year ago. They’d been in Mourmelon cooling their heels, and Dick had gone to Paris, or been about to go. He couldn’t quite remember. 

There was a knock at the door. He turned to find Ann there, leaning against the wall. “I was watching you awhile,” she said. 

He made a face. “Are you coming in or not? I was going to go to bed.” 

“Liar,” she said. “You were going to sit there stewing over something or other. I know you.” 

“Do you?” 

She sat beside him on the bed and smacked him lightly on the arm. “Ow,” he said. “Lay off. I was wounded in combat, you know.” 

“So I heard,” she said. “Can I see?” 

“C’mon, Annie.” She’d always been a little morbid, his sister. When she was a kid she’d comb the woods, bring home dead things and bleach their skeletons behind the barn. She said she wanted to be a naturalist. 

“Let me see.” 

“Fine.” 

He hauled his leg up on the bed and shoved up his pants-leg so she could see the silvery knot of scar tissue. It was an embarrassment of an injury, and already he was mortified to have joked about it. He wanted to tell her to keep it to herself. Toye or Guarnere would’ve have decked him, and deservedly so. 

She ran her fingers over his ankle, and he thought suddenly of Doc Roe, the careful way his fingers ran over Dick’s broken skin like a set of divining rods. 

“Did it hurt?” 

“Not too bad.” 

Pain like a bright star, and for a second he’d thought, that’s it. And even that was embarrassing, to have had the thought cross his mind. But a man expected it, frankly. Middle of a street in occupied France, adrenaline coursing and snipers looming in the belfries. 

She leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder, and he did feel tired then. When she was very small she would steal down the hall and crawl into his bed when she got scared in the night. He’d wake to her having dragged off most of the covers, her small sweaty hand clasped in his. She took his hand again now. Their arms were freckled to match.

“Thanks for writing,” she said. “You kept Mom from going nuts, I think. Some of the other boys weren’t so good about it.” 

“Of course,” he said. What he wanted to say was _Some of the other boys didn’t come back, whether they wrote or not._

She squeezed his fingers. “How was it, really?”

He shook his head. “Don’t ask me that,” he said. 

He didn’t set an alarm that night either, and again he woke before the sun. His bed was considerably colder this morning than it had been yesterday. He dressed in the blue chill and went downstairs. Snow had fallen in the night and the front walk had vanished, so without thought he went and got the shovel, around the side of the house in the shed where it had always been. He cleared the walk and five feet of sidewalk in either direction, and then he went inside and made a pot of coffee. 

He was sitting at the kitchen table drinking it when his mother came down, stopped in the doorway with a start and clapped her hand to her chest. “Oh,” she said. “You scared me.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

“It’s all right. Do you want some breakfast? I usually make eggs for your father.” 

She’d made his father two scrambled eggs in the morning for as long as Dick could remember. “Maybe just some toast,” he said. “If you’ve got it.” 

She made the toast. He ate it. He pushed his plate away and sat up, pressed his palms to the tabletop. It was seven o’clock in the morning.

***

The most productive thing Dick did on his sojourn in Lancaster was buy a car, a ‘35 Ford kept in good repair, retrieved from the garage of a woman who wouldn’t quite look him in the eye as the money changed hands. Dick had an idea of why that was, and he didn’t need to know more. 

The day after Christmas he packed his things and stowed his suitcase in the backseat and told himself quite fervently that he wasn’t running from anything, or to anything, it was just that having some lead time to get settled before starting work was only sensible. If he was going to see Nix, if he was going to alleviate the itch that had clung to his skin since coming home, that was just a fortuitous side effect. 

The drive passed quickly, following the directions Nix had given him, and before he knew it he was pulling off at the designated exit and onto the main street. He found the quiet little lane without much trouble and glided up to the curb, peered up at the house where he was apparently destined to pass the next phase of his life. Dick hadn’t always put much stock in destiny, but there were things--there were people--that made a man wonder. 

Nix’s house was as grand as expected, though to Dick’s relief it was somehow modestly so. Red brick, a couple of square columns in the front, an arching portico over the door. As he stood and stared the front door opened and Nix came out, peering through the falling snow. 

“That you?” he called, as if he didn’t know. He made a show of looking at the car. “Jesus, is that thing roadworthy?” 

“Got me here, didn’t it?” Dick replied. “Come help me bring this stuff in.” 

Nix came out in moccasins and without a coat, hugging himself and mincing along the front walk, cursing up a storm as he did. He looked ridiculous, and Dick wanted to kiss him. He shook his head instead and cuffed Nix on the arm and told him to stop grumbling and grab a bag. 

“Is this it?” Nix said when they were inside. “You didn’t bring much.” 

“There wasn’t much to bring,” Dick said. “Clothes, some books. I guess I’ll have to buy a suit.” 

“Yeah, we can go into the city,” Nix said, sounding preoccupied. He was looking Dick up and down, looking around the foyer like he couldn’t quite make person and place match. 

“What?” 

Shake of his head; his hair flopped this way and that. “Nothing. So, you want the tour?” 

Dick did. 

The house had been his father’s once, abandoned as a starter home, set aside for all the future generations of Nixons that should’ve marched down Lew’s branch of the family tree. Nix was wry about that, but Dick felt a pang anyway thinking by turns of Kathy, of the girl, and of how perhaps he didn’t think of them enough. But they were Nix’s business, not his, and the room that might once have housed a crib and a doll’s house had become an office, so what did it matter. The wallpaper was still pale blue, with little rabbits on. 

Nix stared at it for a long moment. “Never got around to that,” he said. 

Down the hall to the bedrooms; here was the guest room, where Dick tried to set his bags down;  
here was the master, where Nix let him. Dick had to think a moment about what a master bedroom meant, had never lived in the sort of place that meted out space hierarchically. 

“Well it’s bigger,” said Nix. “So it makes sense that--” 

“There’s plenty of space in the other room,” Dick said, unsure what exactly he was arguing. 

“So keep your shit in the other room,” Nix said. “But I’m telling you there’s plenty of space in here.” 

Nix went into the bathroom then. Dick dropped his duffle at the foot of the bed; there was a heavy trunk there already, and when he opened it he was met with a neat stack of blankets, thick sweaters, all of it arranged more neatly than he suspected Nix had the capacity for. The trunk smelled strongly of cedar. 

“Kathy moved all this stuff in,” Nix said from the bathroom doorway. “We were going to come out here after we got married; I was going to work with my father, learn the business.” 

“Didn’t happen?”

“No. War started and she didn’t want to move out of the city. Guess I can’t blame her, she was only coming out here for me anyway.” 

He went over to the trunk and leaned inside, rummaging through its contents, pulling out armfuls of thick ribbing, pale cashmere, Fair Isle. 

“Hell, half this is hers,” he said. “We can, uh. We can clear it out.”

“You don’t have to do it now.” 

“No, it’s fine. Here, put your stuff in here.” 

He gathered up a stack of sweaters and disappeared them into the closet. Dick frowned at the lacuna Nix had excavated, but the gesture seemed imbued with a gravitas he didn’t quite have a handle on. Better, he thought, to err on the side of caution. He unpacked then and there, Nix standing over him as if bearing witness to some ritual. 

“You think it’s smart, me staying here? I thought I might rent a place.” He’d moved on to the chest of drawers, and was currently nesting a quantity of socks alongside Nix’s, which proved both thrilling and strange.

He could feel Nix’s noncommittal shrug from behind him. “I don’t know about smart,” he said. “But then when do I ever. I don’t know, Dick. Stay awhile, anyway, til you figure things out.” 

Dick stood, wiped his trousers free of dust. He thought privately that the place might last have been dusted when Kathy moved those sweaters in, but again, what did it matter. He was here, and Nix wanted him to stay. 

“I’d like that,” he said. He wiped his hands off again, for want of something to do with them. His palms were damp. He realized, suddenly, that they were entirely alone. “Lew--” 

“Come on, I’ll show you rest of the place. And then I thought cocktail hour--I bought you a pint of milk, don’t worry--and then I know a halfway decent spot the next town over to get a bite. So--” 

“Lew.” 

“What?” 

Dick stepped closer and gripped him around the bicep, Nix’s sweater soft beneath his sweaty palm. He slid his other arm around Nix’s waist. It still felt clunky, moving like this. Dick felt like a kid at a school dance, unsure where to put his hands. 

“Thanks,” he said, and bent to kiss Nix on the mouth. 

Nix flinched, as if he hadn’t been expecting the contact. 

“Sorry,” Dick said, stepping back. “I--” 

“It’s all right. Let’s go down,” Nix said. He turned and strode from the room, and Dick followed, dogging him down the stairs and into the sitting room. 

The tour effectively ended there; Nix waved in the general direction of the kitchen and poured himself a drink. They sat awkwardly on opposite sides of the room. Outside the afternoon was sliding into evening; the light was blueish, the whole house full of that woollen quiet unique to winter. 

“It’s a nice place,” Dick said. 

Nix looked thunderous; Dick was sure he was about launch into some diatribe, the topic of which was likely to be Kathy, or Nix’s parents, or both. Then just as suddenly as the look descended, it vanished, and Nix shook his head, laughed darkly. “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Dick said. 

“She did a good job, you know,” Nix said, swirling his drink around in its glass. “Kathy.” He hefted the glass and gestured with it. “All this. I don’t know the first thing about decorating.” 

“You heard from her?” 

Nix shook his head. “Not really. Sent her a note before Thanksgiving. Sent her a check. I figured she was entitled.” 

“And your daughter?” 

“Going to nursery school around the block at St. Mary’s,” Nix said. “Learning her ABCs. Hell, Dick, I don’t know. The way I left off with Kathy I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t tell the kid I bought it over there and to forget all about me. Maybe she ought to, and save everyone the trouble.” 

“C’mon, Lew, don’t talk like that.”

“I’m serious,” Nix said. “Shit.” He set the glass down and scrubbed both hands over his face. “Hey, let’s get out of here, okay? You hungry?” 

“I could eat,” Dick said. 

Nix drove. Of course the car was much finer than Dick’s Ford, and a smoother ride too. Outside it had begun to snow again, but only flurries, and the roads were mainly clear. Nix drove with one hand on the wheel and the other in his lap, fingers twitching against his thigh. Ten minutes into the drive Dick huffed a sigh, reached out and took up that hand and laced their fingers together. Nix didn’t look at him, but Dick saw him smile at the windshield. 

“I’m--I’m glad to be here,” Dick said quietly. “Home was--” He shook his head, hoped Nix would read the lapse for what it was despite Dick’s inability to translate.

“Yeah,” Nix said. “Home’s home. Not quite what you thought it’d be, right? I didn’t want to say, in case Lancaster was different.” 

“No,” Dick said. “You were right.” There was a time he would have been shocked to agree with Nix on the concept of home. Now he found there was something about the hand in his that felt closer to whatever he remembered than Lancaster had been. 

“Here’s something funny,” Nix said, his tone dry enough that Dick knew whatever came next wouldn’t be funny at all. “You remember Stanhope saying my mom was under the weather that night at the Waldorf? Turns out she was so far under the goddamn weather she divorced him. She’s been holed up in a penthouse across the park this whole time, seeing nobody but Blanche and her ladies who lunch and Kathy, if you can believe it.” 

“Wow,” Dick said. “I--I don’t know what to say, Nix. She won’t see you?” 

“Ah, well. I haven’t exactly battered down the door. I already got it on the nose from her once about Kathy right when I got back. Not in any great hurry for round two.” 

“I didn’t know they got on,” Dick said. 

“Are you kidding? Mom loved her. Thought she was going to make an honest man of me, whip me into some kind of shape. She was over the moon when the kid came along. I guess she thought that’d really seal the deal. You know, I bet she’d love you too. There’s just that little matter of you being a fellow, though knowing her she might let that slide.” 

Dick laughed wryly. “Somehow I doubt that,” he said. “Though it’s--” 

He shook his head. He’d been about to say it was a nice thought, but it occurred to him that the implication might be a little much. Besides, who knew how good he was for Nix. Look what they’d gotten themselves into, after all. 

Dinner was simple. No white tablecloths, no wine, the way Dick liked it. The diner was attended by a lone waitress who looked as if she’d rather be anywhere else, and Dick couldn’t blame her on a night like this. He had a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich and though he couldn’t rightly say it topped the steak it was one of the more satisfying meals he could remember, just the two of them sitting across from one another in a too-small booth, a tight enough squeeze that no one would begrudge the way their legs fit together knee to ankle under the table.

“I didn’t say it before,” Nix said. “But I’m glad you’re here, too.” 

He wasn’t quite looking at Dick; he was making a neat stack of sugar cubes alongside his coffee cup and saucer. The waitress was glaring at him from behind the counter, but Nix was oblivious. Satisfied, he dropped the first three into the cup, sloshed in some cream and stirred. 

“Thought you took it black,” said Dick. Nix was generally of the opinion that the only augmentation coffee needed was a splash of Vat 69, no matter the hour. 

“I’m living it up,” Nix said. “In honor of all that swill we drank in Bastogne.” 

“Cheers to that,” Dick said, kissing the edge of Nix’s mug with his own. He took a sip. Cream, one sugar, mainly because he felt bad about Nix wasting them. Nix looked up then, met Dick’s eyes, smiled and rolled his and shook his head. 

And this, Dick thought, must be happiness: to sit warm beside the one you liked best, with coffee sweet in your mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel compelled to point out, because I'm anal, that Nix's quip about the British Navy is probably an anachronism--it's usually attributed to Churchill and dated from the 1910s, but there's no evidence Churchill actually said it and as far as I could find, it didn't show up widely in print until the '60s. But whatever! That's what happens when you try to source things and go down a rabbit hole of fact-checking.


End file.
